Case studies / Unilever shelf research
Before a new soap reached the shelf, I found out what moves soap off it
Two weeks of field market research for Unilever ahead of a new soap brand: what's on the shelf, at what price, and why retailers stock it and customers buy it — every data point GPS-tagged to its outlet.
The problem
Unilever was preparing to bring a new soap brand to market. Before settling price and positioning, they needed the reality on the shelf: which soaps retailers stocked, what they sold them for — Unilever's own brands and every competitor's — and what actually made a retailer stock a soap and a customer pick it up.
My role
I worked as a field market researcher through AMP Ltd, one of Unilever's distribution partners. For two weeks I covered 20+ outlets a day, collected the data, analysed it and wrote up my findings in a report. AMP's team consolidated my report with other researchers' work, compared the results and presented them to Unilever.
How I ran it
- As a shopper. Mystery shopping: I walked in as a buyer, asked which soaps were available and at what price, and listened to how the shopkeeper pitched each one to a customer.
- As Unilever's representative. Direct trade interviews on why each shop chose the soaps it stocked.
- At the point of purchase. I watched what customers actually bought, then asked some of them what made them choose it — some in passing, others as a declared survey.
- Every data point GPS-tagged to its outlet, so the findings could be mapped, not just tallied. Conversations were recorded with consent; otherwise I wrote them up immediately afterwards.
What I found
Retailers' stocking decisions came down to three things: the profit margin, because they sell to make a profit; how fast the soap sells, because a product that moves empties the shelf and gets restocked, which is how a shop grows; and the quality of the product, because quality is what brings customers back. Together with the price comparison across Unilever’s brands and its competitors’, that showed what a new soap would be up against on the shelf.
Impact
- 20+ outlets a day — two weeks of field coverage
- Three angles — shopper, retailer and customer, triangulated
- Mapped — every data point tied to its outlet's location
What I learned
One angle only tells you one side's story. Asking as a shopper, asking as a supplier, then watching what customers actually buy is how the real answer shows up. The new soap did reach the market — I can't claim that was my research, but it's the same habit I bring to product work now: get the evidence from more than one direction before anything gets built.