Category Co-captain: Vitamins and Supplements: Bayer HealthCare

To ensure continued growth of the vitamins and supplements category, Bayer HealthCare developed solutions in such areas as aisle orientation (preferably near the pharmacy) and aisle organization using “beacon brands” as wayfinders within the aisle. The final recommendation included a detailed shelf configuration that created segment blocks by health states to enable easier shopping, and optimized segment adjacencies to encourage multiple purchases.

Another identified area of shopper concern was item proliferation at shelf, which made shopping more difficult and confusing. Assortment had increased along with continued category growth, and many retailers hadn’t proactively “pruned back.”

To support enhanced assortment, Bayer developed detailed retailer guidelines based on analysis of shopper dynamics and switching behavior. This included focusing on brand and vendor duplication, leveraging transferable demand insights to understand tradeoffs between items and brands, and conducting assortment analysis every six months to keep up with evolving category dynamics. Bayer also worked on coming up with a future vision for the category and then having retailers build and shape it to their own advantage. 

The results of these initiatives have been impressive, with dollar sales in FDMx up 8.0 percent in 2010, according to IRI. Bayer’s One A Day brand was up 11.3 percent, nearly double the multivitamin segment, which grew 6.2 percent, while the company’s Citracal brand rose 10.1 percent, dramatically above the rate of the calcium segment, which increased 1.5 percent.