It’s no secret that India gets younger by the day. According to the Census of India, a significant 47.9 per cent of the population is under 21 years of age. Naturally, their consumption habits also reflect the demographics.

Personal hygiene products such as deodorants are setting the cash registers ringing. According to global information and measurement company Nielsen, the deodorants category in India is a ₹2,100-crore category, while face washes have become a market worth ₹1,900 crore.

This is not just buoyed by sales in the metros. Nielsen executives point out that the village youth has expanded his buying basket to include branded face-washes, moisturisers, hair gels and fairness creams.

But spot the missing link in the personal care puzzle. It goes by the name of body wash, or shower gels, as they are sometimes called.

While almost all personal care categories are showing encouraging sales — consumers have been quick to even adopt categories such as face wash and hand wash — the body wash category seems to have been a laggard.

Lather comfortable pricing

Devendra Chawla, group president, food and FMCG, Future Group, told an attentive audience of marketers at a recent Nielsen conference that this is where the retail giant spotted an opportunity.

At the group’s food and grocery retail outlets, consumers were picking up toilet soaps in abundance.

He points out that the average consumer spend on toilet soaps at the group’s outlets was ₹60 while at the local grocer it was Rs ₹30. (This could also do with the fact that larger retailers rarely sell soaps in single units. They are sold either in twin or triple packs, if not more.)

But the more noteworthy point is that the same consumers who were open to spending more on toilet soaps were giving the body wash category short shrift.

Chawla says that’s because there is a huge price gap between the average body wash and the toilet soaps. For example, while the average cost of a body wash would be in the range of ₹120, the average price of toilet soaps was in the ₹50-60 range.

To bridge this gap, Chawla says the Future Group recently introduced shower gels at the price of toilet soaps.

Called Think Skin, the brand is currently being sold in the North and West of the country for ₹59 for a 300 ml bottle. It will be available across the country in a month.

While it’s still early days to get into sales data, Chawla says the beginning has been very encouraging.

Colour codes

Industry analysts point out that if you look at the recent past it shows that the Indian consumer is willing to upgrade if they get the right value proposition. One case in point is the Godrej Expert range of hair colours.

A couple of years ago, when the brand was looking at upgrading consumers from powder dyes, it hit a roadblock on the price factor. While the average price of powder dyes for hair was in the range of ₹15, the hair colours being sold by consumer goods majors, mostly multinational giants, was averaging ₹150. Expecting consumers to take a leap of this magnitude was unreasonable, to say the least.

Hence Godrej Consumer embarked on research on how it could upgrade powder dye users to a reasonable price point. It found that the resistance for upgrading to hair colours was not just the price point. Consumers found it cumbersome to get the right proportions while mixing the colours.

Also, Godrej wanted the experience of consumers upgrading from powder dyes to be as superior as those consumers who bought top-end hair colours that cost more than ₹500 per pack. That was asking for too much.

So the company decided to launch its colour offerings in single-usage packs. To ensure that consumers had minimum inconvenience while using colours, the company in its Rich Crème offering gave pre-measured sachets so that there was no way of getting the mix wrong. Even the price point was brought crashing down to an affordable ₹30.

Sunil Kataria, Business Head - India and SAARC, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL), says that in order to disrupt the market, when all other hair colours were sold in cartons and displayed on store shelves, the single-use sachets of Godrej Expert colours were hung alongside the shampoo sachets and hence stood out in the store front. The product was well received by consumers. But the best compliment came from the competition. Last year, L’Oreal offered a significantly lower priced offering to meet the Godrej Expert price challenge.

Consumers certainly do not mind that.

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