Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) or Consumer Packed Goods (CPG) is one of the largest and fast-growing industries in the world, with projected market size of $15,361.8 billion by 2025 and growing at a CAGR of 5.4%. FMCG products usually have a shorter shelf life, almost consumed on a daily basis, and sold in a huge volume at a low cost with a smaller profit margin, and these factors make it one of the most competitive industries in the world. In the FMCG value chain, marketing/sales analyses usually focused on improving the commercial performance of the products and fail to be customer-centric, i.e., ignoring customer preference and feedback. In this Voice Of Customer study, we shall discuss in deep the factors influencing customer decision while buying toothpaste, one of the essential FMCG goods.

Toothpaste – Market Overview

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has doubled the emphasis on oral hygiene. With dental clinics around the world closed for routine consultations, the significance of regular oral self-care has increased among people and has driven toothpaste consumption globally. The toothpaste market is estimated to reach USD 34.6 Billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 5.8% between 2020 and 2026. Though the global toothpaste market continues to be highly fragmented with local players, the leading players such as Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and GlaxoSmithKline PLC tend to dominate the markets with a majority share.

Our Methodology

Unlike traditional market research methods that predominantly rely on manual surveys that are highly prone to errors and bias, our unique methodology leverages online customer-generated content. We employ AI-powered text mining algorithms that extract related and unstructured data from the internet from several different sources such as social media, blogs, news feeds, etc. Then the raw data is fed into our Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Sentiment Analysis Engines, which uses AI models that are custom trained for the specific use cases with industry-specific taxonomies and hierarchy evolved from raw data. This sentiment analysis process helps to derive customer and market insights accurately and link them to business areas and goals.

Analysis Insights

The following are the insights automatically derived by the Voice of Consumer Insights and Signals (VOCIS) module by aggregating customer conversations from diverse sources such as Social Media, E-Commerce reviews, Discussion Boards, and Blog Posts.

Brand Insights

This analysis focuses on providing insights into the brand perception of the customers. With the use of sentiment analysis, we shall compare the perception of a brand with that of the leading competitors and use the same to create a data-driven brand strategy.

Our analysis shows that Crest is the brand with a maximum Shar of Voice (SoV) of 19% and a positive sentiment rating of 4.26/5, followed by Tom’s and Colgate.

Product Level Insights

The buyer’s decision to purchase a product tends to be strongly influenced by a few key factors, features, and attributes. This analysis would help the brands in understanding these factors and optimize the product to appeal better to the target segment.

From more than 7.5K reviews mined from the E-Commerce site, the above were the top 5 features that need a fix and got the potential to improve the rating, thus influence the customers positively in buying the product. Taste emerged as the topmost influential factor with a significant impact on the ratings, followed by Packing Design/Quality and Affordability.

Competitor Insights

Competitor Benchmarking is quintessential as it helps in developing a deep understanding of the market ecosystem and builds a picture of gaps to be fixed and opportunities to leverage. It also helps in streamlining the product and marketing efforts by emulating your competitor’s success elements such as price and key product features.

The sentiment analysis for Crest, the top brand based on the customer rating against its competitors, highlighted the product features that are favorable and the features that have scope for improvement. The features such as the presence of natural ingredients and smell contributed to the positive sentiment scores. Whereas, features such as the addition of additives & preservatives and lack of pain relief components appear to contribute to the negative sentiment scores.

SetuServ’s Voice of Consumer Insights and Signals (VOCIS) platform employs custom models that can be built rapidly specifically for use cases with proven workflows, data pipelines & AI modules. These custom models help in rendering highly accurate and relevant insights linked to the organization’s KPI and goals

 

 

Cannabis was once considered to be an illicit substance of abuse predominantly due to its psychoactive effect and potential of leading to physical, social, and emotional harm. It was also regarded to be the most widely cultivated, trafficked, and abused illicit drug in the world. But, recent developments in research related to cannabis has completely changed its perception as an abusive drug globally.

Though it’s possible to isolate more than 113 different Cannabinoids from cannabis plants, the most notable one is the phytocannabinoid TetraHydroCannabinol (THC), followed by Cannabidiol (CBD), yet another significant constituent of the plant. THC is the primary psychoactive compound in cannabis and banned globally across many countries as it impinges parts of the brain responsible for thinking, memory, pleasure, coordination, and movement. However, CBD, with countless medical benefits, doesn’t have any psychoactive properties and has recently changed the perception of cannabis globally.

The legality of CBD Products

While the legal status of cannabis for recreational purposes in most nations is illegal, the legal status for use of CBD has been made permissible in certain countries because CBD is an extract from the cannabis plant, the same plant that produces the psychoactive THC, its usage is highly restricted by regulation and legislation.

SOURCE: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Legality_of_cannabis_by_country.PNG

The map above shows the current status of cannabis legality around the world. However, even some countries where cannabis is illegal might still allow CBD to be sold for medical purposes.

The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) recently voted to remove cannabis and cannabis resins from their “Most Dangerous Drug” category based on the 2019 recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO). Subsequently, the shift in global attitudes towards cannabis has softened and many jurisdictions are permitting cannabis use for recreation, medication, or both.

Most of the European countries have legalized CBD products in some way. While countries like France and Norway only allow CBD isolates (100% CBD with no THC), the rest allow extraction of CBD from industrial Hemp that contains less than 0.2% of THC.

In the US, the 2018 Farm Bill legalized the cultivation, processing, and sale of Hemp that contains less than 0.3% THC. However, the individual states have their own status of the legality of CBD within their borders. And, in countries like India, the use of cannabis in any form is strictly illegal.

Understanding CBD Customer Preference & Product Gaps – An Analysis

As per the latest report by MarketStudyReport LLC, the global CBD market size would reach USD 24.08 billion by 2027. Apart from its medical benefits, the availability in various forms such as oil, capsules, tincture, oils, concentrates, lip balms, and lotions, as well as edibles such as ice creams, candies, coffees, and gums, are also driving the market for CBD. In a dynamic and fast-growing market landscape such as the CBD, it’s quintessential for the brands to understand the benefits the customers are seeking and product gaps of their target audience to serve them better and drive the business.

For this analysis, using our proprietary text mining algorithm, we extracted reviews from relevant customer conversations and reviews from online sources such as social media, e-commerce websites, blogs, and discussion forums. In order to understand the reason why customers use CBD products and their issues with their current products, we deployed AI-Powered Natural Language Processing (NLP) Engine and Sentiment Analysis Algorithms to derive the following insights for the top 3 CBD using countries.

Product Benefits

CBD’s psychiatric benefits and its ability to treat some neuropsychiatric disorders are clearly evident in the analysis, as stress and anxiety relief emerged as the #1 benefit of CBD usage, followed by using it as a sleeping aid, especially in the USA and Germany. Also, due to CBD’s anti-inflammatory properties, it’s widely used for general pain relief in the UK and USA. Our analysis also highlights that CBD is widely used as an energy booster and in treating arthritis and knee pain.

Product Issues

The Sentiment Analysis highlighted the product gaps. The product smell and product worthiness (value for money) are the attributes that predominantly displeases the US and UK customers. The analysis also highlights that German customers are widely discontent with product packaging and product ingredients.

SetuServ’s VOCIS platform provides customer insights and market intelligence for the CBD and cannabis industry. Combining our automated insights generated by our AI-powered systems along with human SME intelligence, CBD insights guides brands in deeply understanding the market landscape and device strategies to navigate the market challenges.

Household cleaning products hold a key position in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) market due to their invaluable role in maintaining personal and public health. They are quite an essential product group as it helps in removing germs, soils, dust, and other contamination from hard or soft surfaces, thus reducing the presence of germs that cause infectious diseases and make the place more healthy and pleasant. The most common components in household cleaning products include alkalis, acids, detergents, abrasives, sanitizers, and spirit solvents. Also, some of the products contain hazardous ingredients such as flammable liquids, acids, and strong alkalis that require proper precautions while using. In this Voice Of Customer study, we shall discuss briefly the factors influencing customer decisions while buying household cleaning products.

Household Cleaning Products – Market Overview

Rapid urbanization, growing tendency towards maintaining personal as well as public hygiene are the key factors driving household cleaning products sales globally. According to recent research by Fortune Business Insights, the global household cleaning market size was $163.98 billion in 2019 and projected to reach $312.49 billion by 2027, with a CAGR of 4.97 % between 2020 to 2027. Also, it’s highly fragmented with key players such as Church & Dwight Co. Inc. (U.S.), Colgate-Palmolive Co. (U.S.), Godrej Consumer Products Ltd. (India), Henkel AG & Co. KGaA (Germany), Kao Group (Japan), The Procter & Gamble Co. (U.S.), Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc (U.K.), S. C. Johnson & Son Inc. (U.S.), Goodmaid Chemicals Corporation (Malaysia), and Unilever NV (U.K.).

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has created more consciousness on hygienic living and household cleaning among people across the world. This circumstance created a very high demand for household cleaning products that led to a global shortage that made manufacturers increase their production capacity and positively impacted global sales.

Our Methodology

Traditional market research methods in the FMCG industry predominantly rely on manual surveys and store observations. These methods are inaccurate and highly prone to bias and human errors. To overcome this, we leveraged content generated by the customers online to ensure a large sample size that’s spread across geographies. We used web crawlers to text mine customer conversations from various online sources such as social media, discussion forums, e-commerce reviews, and blogs. Then the raw unstructured text data is further processed by Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Sentiment Analysis Engines, which uses AI models that are custom trained for the specific use cases with industry-specific taxonomies to generate insights. These valuable insights can be used by the companies to take strategic decisions and course corrections to stay ahead in the market.

Analysis Insights

The following are the insights automatically derived by the Voice of Consumer Insights and Signals (VOCIS) module by aggregating customer conversations from diverse sources such as social media, e-commerce reviews, discussion boards, and blog posts mined for FMCG related taxonomies.

 

Brand Insights

 

The value of a brand solely depends on the reputation of the brand, and it is achieved by consistently delivering value throughout the customer journey. This analysis focuses on providing insights into the brand perception of the customers throughout their journey. With the use of sentiment analysis, we shall compare the perception of a brand with that of the leading competitors and use the same to create a data-driven brand strategy.

Green Gobbler emerged as the most preferred brand in the analysis with a better rating and highest Share of Voice (SoV). These insights show the customer’s inclination towards natural and nature-identical cleaning products.

Product Level Insights

The buyer’s decision to purchase a product tends to be strongly influenced by a few key factors, features, and attributes. This analysis would help the brands in understanding these factors and optimize the product to appeal better to the target segment.

From more than 71K reviews mined from various online sources, the above were the top 5 features that got the potential to improve the rating, thus influence the customer’s buying decision positively. When it comes to Household Cleaning Products, the cleaning performance seems to be the decisive factor influencing customers, followed by the smell and affordability of the product.

Competitor Insights

Competitor Benchmarking is quintessential as it helps in developing a deep understanding of the market ecosystem and builds a picture of gaps to be fixed and opportunities to leverage. It also helps in streamlining the product and marketing efforts by emulating your competitor’s success elements such as price and key product features.

The competitor benchmarking on product features for Green Gobbler, the top brand (based on the customer rating and SoV) against its competitors, highlighted the features that are favorable and the features that have scope for improvement. The attributes with a positive sentiment such as Package Design and Description Accuracy indicates the importance of packaging and optimal communication on the product package. Also, as the natural and nature-identical cleaners prized in premium, affordability emerged as a trailing factor.

SetuServ’s VOCIS platform can help FMCG companies in extracting valuable insights from customer reviews mined from various online sources. VOCIS is highly capable of rapidly building custom models specific to the use cases and generate highly accurate and relevant product insights for better business development and customer experience.

 

Cannabidiol (CBD) is a compound extracted from the cannabis plant such as Hemp and Marijuana that possesses both therapeutic and medicinal properties. In recent years, the interest in CBD has significantly grown across the globe. This upsurge in the public interest has led to the emergence of many brands, and online communities focusing on adopting CBD products. In fact, the global CBD market is projected to reach USD 15.3 Billion by 2025 with a CAGR of 22.2% between 2019-2025. With 2020 coming to an end, when we look back at such a tumultuous year, we can identify five top trends observed in the CBD industry.

Key CBD Benefits

CBD is considered as a wonder drug with varied and extensive medical benefits. From pain management and helping with psychological disorders to treating severe diseases like Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases, CBD is currently used in treating various medical issues. The following are some of the proven uses of CBD.

Psychological Benefits:

CBD helps to relieve psychological disorders such as Anxiety, Depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Insomnia.

Physiological Benefits:

CBD is beneficial in treating Seizures, Nausea, and Cardiovascular disorders. It also assists in Pain Relief,  Reducing Inflammation, Lowering the Risk of Diabetes, Fighting Cancer, and combating Neurodegenerative Disorders.

 

Trend Analysis Methodology

We leveraged our proprietary Social Listening tool for this Trend Analysis. This tool automatically collects customer conversations from various online sources such as social media, blogs, e-commerce sites, and discussion forums, thus reducing the margin of error due to the larger sample size that helps in less biased and accurate insights. The mined unstructured textual data gets further processed by text mining and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms in performing multi-dimensional sentiment analysis to provide the below-emerging trends in the CBD market.

 

Emerging CBD Trends

CBD Edibles

Although the most common forms of CBD include oils, tinctures, capsules, and topicals such as balms and creams, CBD beverages and edibles have gained a lot of popularity in recent times. With increasing demand and popularity, CBD is now infused in a variety of food products such as gummies, protein bars, beverages, candies, and dried fruits to make it tasty, discrete, easy to consume, and attractive for the increasing customer base. As CBD edibles are broken down slowly in the digestive system, the CBD is released gradually over a more extended period thus, extending the effects for the consumer.

Source: https://mms.businesswire.com/ 

Legal Relaxations

At the tail end of 2018, The Farm Bill passed by the US Government legalized the production of Hemp, and it had a limited implication on the CBD industry due to fuzzy federal and state laws, which contributed to substantial growth in CBD production and consumption in the US. Also recently in Dec 2020, based on a series of World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations on cannabis and its derivatives, The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) removed cannabis from its ‘most dangerous drug’ category recognizing the medicinal and therapeutic potential of the drug. Over the years cannabis products have found wide acceptance in countries such as the US, Canada, Spain, Germany, Uruguay, Australia, Columbia, Chile, and Israel. Many more countries anticipate the legalization of cannabis across various domains.

 

Continued Price Drop

Increased production due to the legalization of hemp has enabled a steady supply to meet market demands. This surge in availability of hemp, the raw material of the CBD, has led to a price crash in May 2019. Since then, the price of CBD has continued to decrease. As tracked by The Jacobsen, a price reporting agency, the average selling price of CBD isolate was at $4,000 per kg in July 2019 to ~$750 in July 202 – a drop of roughly $3,000 per kg in the last two years.

Expanding Research Areas

Research continues across the globe to uncover the potential uses of CBD, particularly in the areas of effectiveness to treat physiological or neurological conditions. The presence of a nonaddictive component that interacts with our body’s serotonin receptor has captivated the interest of researchers in studying it as an effective treatment for pain relief. The trend of exploring CBD as a potential cure for cancer due to its anti-inflammatory and antitumorigenic properties also continues. The antipsychotic property of CBD is also actively explored in treating mental conditions such as social anxiety and depression.

 

Certificate of Analysis

With a lack of specific industry regulations and standards surrounding CBD products, it is challenging for customers to know the precise composition of each product in the market. A Certificate of Analysis (COA) could help customers overcome this challenge. A COA is a document that’s issued by an accredited laboratory that certifies the complete composition of a product accurately. Lately, CBD brands have begun offering COA to their products as a common practice to win the trust of their customers. For CBD products, a COA is stipulated to include a comprehensive list of cannabinoids, terpenes, microbiological levels, and likely contaminants such as pesticides, solvent residue, or heavy metals.

While in hindsight understanding and adapting to trends will help brands stay competitive. The key to garner exponential growth can happen through predicting future trends in the least possible time. SetuServ’s VoCIS platform enables this through data-driven analysis at scale.

SetuServ’s VoCIS platform provides emerging trends,  customer insights, and market intelligence for the CBD and cannabis industry. It leverages AI technologies such as social listening, text mining, and sentiment analysis to provide accurate insights automatically.