#AsiaeCommerceAwards highlight: PepsiCo shares 3 pronged approach as customer habits shift

While B2B eCommerce is treated by many brands as a channel where the main relationship that comes to play is that of the retailer buyers, it is essential to keep in mind the relationship of both retailer buyers and consumers in order to ensure the long-term success of B2B online sales.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, as consumer behaviour shifts towards eCommerce, it is crucial for brands establish a strong online presence in order to stand out among competitors. To achieve the strong online presence, PepsiCo and DKSH embarked on its “Driving growth in e-retail” campaign which wowed the judges at MARKETING INTERACTIVE’s Asia eCommerce Awards 2020. 

The agency won several awards taking home the gold in Best in eCommerce (Marketplace / eRetailer) – Food & Beverage, four silvers in Best in eCommerce (Brands) – Food & Beverage, Best in eCommerce (Marketplace / eRetailer) – Entertainment, Best in eCommerce (Marketplace / eRetailer) – Health & Beauty, Best eCommerce Consultant and four bronze in Best in eCommerce (Brands) – Healthcare & Pharma, Best in eCommerce (Marketplace / eRetailer) – Health & Beauty, Best in eCommerce – Supermarkets / Hypermarkets, Best eCommerce Consultant.

Challenge

DKSH Singapore is PepsiCo’s exclusive market expansion services provider, selling Lays and Quaker Oats online since 2017.

With the rise of online grocery players in Singapore such as Amazon and Redmart, PepsiCo needed to improve the performance of its core brands, Lays Chips and Quaker Oats. As such, PepsiCo required a solution to accelerate its acquisition of new consumers and drive engagement for its existing customers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Strategy

The change in consumer purchasing behaviour that led to a surge in online purchases led DKSH to believe that it was crucial for PepsiCo to establish a strong online presence through the implementation of a three-pronged approach in order to accelerate its online growth.

1. Increasing PepsiCo’s online channel coverage

During the circuit breaker, there was an inherent consumer demand for instant access to groceries. To seize this opportunity, DKSH partnered with Foodpanda, one of the largest food delivery platforms in Singapore to help bring groceries to consumers island-wide. This partnership with Foodpanda provided convenience to consumers as they were able to order their desired groceries through their phone or laptop. The groceries ordered will then be delivered to their home in an hour.
As early entrants into Foodpanda’s PandaMart platform, both Lays and Quaker became top of mind when it comes to snacks and breakfast foods. Due to the pandemic, Foodpanda’s sales grew 50 times in only six months and it continued to grow with the same speed.

In addition to Foodpanda, DKSH has also partnered with Grab to offer PepsiCo’s portfolio on GrabMart. This partnership allowed for next day delivery for consumers wanting to purchase PepsiCo’s products.

2. Optimising PepsiCo’s Channel Presence

The DKSH team optimized PepsiCo’s brands’ presence on Redmart and Amazon by putting forward consumer’s favorite products and created attractive product pages, with detailed rich content and descriptions that contained clear statement of benefits.

The team also launched dedicated brand stores on Amazon. This gave more visibility to both brands when consumers were searching for PepsiCo’s products or just something to snack on whilst browsing on Google, Lazada or Amazon.

3. Accelerating new user acquisition through onsite promotional activities

DKSH ran consistent consumer promotions, while ensuring maximum return of investment with real time promotion efficiency analysis. In order to drive both new user acquisition and existing consumer repurchase, DKSH leveraged on three main types of promotional mechanics.

Execution

The DKSH team focuses its campaign efforts on the following types of promotional mechanics:

Bundles

Given PepsiCo’s extensive snacks portfolio, DKSH’s team put together “flexible combo” bundles. Consumers were able to mix and match multiple flavors and brands together to get attractive volume offers. With this, buyers of Lays were offered to try out Red Rock Deli chips or even Quaker Oat’s products. Providing extra value to the consumers increased the average order value which ultimately drove new acquisition across other PepsiCo’s brands. With the use of this mechanic Red Rock Deli chips tripled their new consumer base from 2019 to 2020 thereby, achieving the highest sales in the brand’s history on ecommerce.

Gifts with purchase

To increase new acquisitions, the team included a giveaway of mason jars in May 2020 on Redmart to entice new and existing consumers to purchase Quaker Oats. With two thirds of consumer who purchased the Quaker Oats were new acquisitions, it led Quaker Oats to achieve a sales performance that was doubled as compared to its previous year’s performance.

Co-branding promotions

With the knowledge that oats and milk go great together, the team co-branded Quaker Oats with Arla Organic Milk and Anlene. A total of 240 gift packs of Quaker Oats were redeemed in less than a week with the purchase of Arla Organic Milk. For Anlene, significant discounts were offered for both Anlene and Quaker Oats if they were being bought together.

Result

The Anlene promotion resulted in a 30% uplift in sales week on week with a 14% growth in new consumer acquisition. Through the implementation of the three-prong approach, the campaign was successful in growing PepsiCo’s eCommerce sales. The strong partnership between DKSH, Redmart and Amazon enabled PepsiCo to rely on DKSH completely to manage its relationships with top Singapore grocery players as well as to optimise channel investment. This allows PepsiCo to focus on building their brands and product innovation, while DKSH drives its in-market sales. As an omni-channel distribution partner for PepsiCo, DKSH carefully managed the plethora of trade partners and ensured positive channel ROI to further build on the rapid growth of eCommerce for PepsiCo.