Panic buying, shifting behavior, fuels new strategies

How Kraft Heinz leveraged 84.51° Insights to win back and retain shoppers.

Challenge

With retailers facing supply challenges in March 2020 driven by COVID-19, customers were defaulting to what was available on shelf versus purchasing their typical brands. As a result, manufacturers saw both an influx of new customers and a departure of historically loyal customers. Kraft Heinz wanted to identify which of its brands should focus on bringing customers lost back, and which brands should focus on retaining new buyers.

Solution

A custom behavioral analytics approach was developed and executed to measure the contribution of new and returning shoppers of commodity and brand sales as well as out of stocks. The goal --- determine where to focus investment to retain the right customers. Analysis on heavy, medium, and light buyers and purchase cycle offered guidance on when to reach customers.

“When COVID hit, we saw channel shifting and lack of brand loyalty and felt that it was really important to identify the largest household opportunities at both a category and brand level. By partnering with 84.51, we were able to identify what those households looked like, how they consumed (or didn’t consume) during COVID, then developed a plan to reengage them to drive share for Kroger.”

Jaime Greiner, Director of Category Leadership - Kroger Kraft Heinz

Results

Within weeks of the initial panic buying, Kraft Heinz implemented customized strategies for 100 key brands and commodities. They optimized investment dollars to bring back previous buyers and retain a disproportionate number of new brand buyers. Kraft Heinz now has a cohesive shopper strategy for its brands and for Kroger’s categories and is investing in ways that maximize impact.

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