Leveraging Product Claims

to Build a Successful
Brand Strategy
KATHARINA BAGUL
Not to be distributed without permission.

The data included in this document is accurate according

to Passport, Euromonitor International’s market research
database, at time of publication: June 2020
Leveraging Product
Claims to Build a
Successful Brand
Strategy

KATHARINA BAGUL

CONNECT WITH US

© 2020 Euromonitor International

Contents

1 Introduction

2 Using Claims to Understand Consumer Demand and Build Successful

Brand Strategies
Discover trendsetters
Competitor analysis and benchmarking
Support branding initiatives
Recognize and seize opportunities

9 Conclusion

10 About Euromonitor International’s Product Claims and Positionings

Data

11 How Can Euromonitor International Help?

© Euromonitor International
Introduction

Today’s consumers can choose from a wide variety of product offers. Product advertising, social media
and a network of friends and family feed into the type of products consumers want to purchase and the
product attributes to watch out for. Some consumers end up feeling overwhelmed with the information
available and seek specific product claims to address their actual needs.

For brands to succeed and achieve growth, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturers must
understand consumer needs and preferences. Therefore, companies need to be informed on which claims
are trending in the respective industry or category they are operating in so that they can position their
products successfully in the market.

The e-commerce channel has seen tremendous growth as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
More and more consumers are turning to online shopping to get their groceries and other everyday
products delivered to their front door. There will likely be a sustained channel shift towards e-commerce
in the future as many consumers that had yet to move online have now experienced the convenience of
online shopping. Beyond online shopping, consumers also use e-commerce to search for and become
informed about products with certain attributes and claims they are interested in for dietary, health or
ethical reasons.

E-commerce data extraction and data science solutions allow companies to identify leading claims in
industries and markets, discover opportunities and compare positioning and claims of their brands
against their competitors. Euromonitor International tracks over 150 dietary and lifestyle product claims
featured on hundreds of thousands of consumer products sold across e-commerce channels worldwide.
This white paper explores how analysing product claims and positioning data can support companies in
building a successful brand strategy and leveraging strategic initiatives.

© Euromonitor International
Using Claims to Understand
Consumer Demand and Build
Successful Brand Strategies

Discover trendsetters
In order to compete in fierce market conditions and succeed, companies need to understand consumer
demand. They must position brands in ways that address consumer needs, which get more and more
sophisticated. FMCG companies increasingly seek to understand the most prevalent claims in an industry
or category. To manage their brands successfully, companies want to know which claims are currently
trendsetters and the relevance of these claims. Also, they want to learn if there are differences across
countries when it comes to leading claims.

Taking dietary and health claims as an example, companies are looking at a large number of potential
options to position their products and want to understand the most important claims to feature on their
brands. Many consumers nowadays have dietary preferences or restrictions, ranging from high, low and no
presence of certain ingredients to very specific diets, such as keto or paleo. Consumers increasingly take
an interest in a product’s ingredients and closely read the label or packaging. Moreover, health positioning
claims supporting, for example, digestive, cardiovascular or brain health are increasingly gaining traction.
This is due to ageing populations in many countries, stressful lifestyles and most recently an increased
focus on health as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and its consequences.

Detailed product claims information can support research and development (R&D) teams with product
formulations by informing the choice of ingredients, sourcing or packaging. It can also inspire innovation
and encourage R&D teams to test certain attributes in new product developments and provide direction
on which resources to invest in. For example, if a company is seeking a clean label approach, should it
opt for a natural or no artificial ingredients claim? Should a company investing in plant-based products
position them as vegan, vegetarian or plant-based?

Using Euromonitor International’s product claims and positioning data, the chart below shows that
the penetration of vegan, vegetarian and plant-based claims differs significantly across markets. While
the vegetarian claim has a higher penetration in Western European countries such as the UK
and Germany, the vegan claim is more prevalent than the vegetarian claim in the US. This allows
manufacturers of plant-based food to make informed decisions on how to best position their products
in the respective markets.

© Euromonitor International
Using Claims to Understand Consumer Demand and Build Successful Brand Strategies 3

Vegetarian, Vegan and Plant-Based Claims for Meat Substitutes Across Key Markets
Digital Share of Shelf in 2019

60%

53.4%

50%

40.9%
40% 38.1%
36.9%
% of Total SKU Count

33.3%

30%
26.7%

21.2% 21.8%

20%

11.3%
10%
6.9%

2.9%

0%
Vegetarian Vegan Plant‐based Vegetarian Vegan Vegan Vegetarian Plant‐based Vegetarian Vegan Plant‐based
United United United Germany Germany USA USA USA Australia Australia Australia
Kingdom Kingdom Kingdom
Diets/Country

Source: Euromonitor International

Manufacturers are also keen to understand how claims will evolve over time. Identifying emerging claims
that may be in the spotlight in the future is another area that market insights on product claims and
positioning can satisfy. Going back to the earlier example, plant-based might be an emerging claim that
has a low penetration now, but the potential to thrive in the future.

Trending claims information can help brand and marketing managers inform and align their marketing
strategies. They are seeking claims that support an increase in volume sales or justify a premium
positioning and price. Insights about the prevalence of claims in different markets can help make new
product launches a success, ensuring the right claims and positioning are chosen depending on regional
preferences. Finally, product claims and positionings data can help leadership teams make informed
decisions on the strategic direction of brands and potentially even the composition of their portfolio.

Competitor analysis and benchmarking

When tracking competitors in a given industry or category, FMCG manufacturers seek to narrow down
information on product claims and positioning to a company or brand level. They want to understand
how a company’s portfolio compares to the leading claims in an industry or category.

© Euromonitor International
4 Using Claims to Understand Consumer Demand and Build Successful Brand Strategies

Detailed product claims data allows companies to identify gaps that may need to be addressed in the
strategic direction. If a company lags behind with respect to certain clean, health or ethical labels
compared to the market average, this information can provide a direction for strategic initiatives and
inform decisions on the allocation of resources and brand strategies. It may even open ideas for potential
merger and acquisitions in the future if certain attributes are missing from the company’s portfolio.

Looking at brands, FMCG manufacturers are interested in understanding what their closest competitors are
doing in terms of product claims and positioning. How much do competitors use claims such as natural?
What does the competition do differently? For example, do competitors choose no artificial ingredients or
no chemical additives claims over a natural claim? Which competitors have the highest usage of a natural
claim in a given category, such as shampoos? The chart below highlights the brands with the most natural
claims in the market, valuable information about the competitive environment.

Top Five Brands with Most Natural Claims in Shampoos in the UK

E-commerce Presence in 2019

120 Jāsön

100
Number of SKUs with claim

Khadi
80

60
Davines

40 Lavera
Garnier Ultimate 
Blends
20

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
% of Total SKU count

Source: Euromonitor International

Product claims and positioning data allows FMCG manufacturers to shed light on competitors’ activities
and draw conclusions for their brand strategies. This helps them address rapidly changing consumer
preferences and better position their brands to successfully compete in a market and achieve growth.

Brand and marketing managers can use this type of insight to reformulate their products, make decisions
on sourcing and align their marketing strategy. Competitive benchmarking also enables brand and
marketing managers to identify white space opportunities, where positioning their brand would help
outperform competitors.

© Euromonitor International
 Using Claims to Understand Consumer Demand and Build Successful Brand Strategies 5

Support branding initiatives

A company’s vision often determines branding initiatives. Leading packaged food manufacturer, Nestlé,
aims to deliver healthier choices to consumers in the future. Unilever’s CEO has committed that, “in the
future, every Unilever brand will be a brand with a purpose”. Euromonitor International’s product claims
and positioning data shows ethical label claims rank among the top five claims for some of Unilever’s key
brands.

Product Claims Used In Unilever’s Brand Portfolio

Top 5 Leading Claims for Unilever's  Top 5 Leading Claims for 
Ben & Jerry's in Ice Cream Unilever's Lipton in Tea
E‐commerce Presence in 2019 E‐commerce Presence in 2019
700 45 600 4

600 40 3.5
500

% of Total SKU Count
35 3
% of Total SKU Count

500
SKUs with Claim

400
SKUs with Claim

30 2.5
400 25 300 2
300 20 1.5
200
15 1
200
10 100
0.5
100
5
0 0
0 0 No Sugar Rainforest Natural Organic Antioxidant
Fairtrade No Gmo Kosher Free Range Dairy Free Alliance

SKUs with Claim % of Total SKU Count SKUs with Claim % of Total SKU Count

Top 5 Leading Claims for Unilever's Seventh Generation  Top 5 Leading Claims for Unilever's Persil in Laundry 
in Home Care Care
E‐commerce Presence in 2019 E‐commerce Presence in 2019
800 30 350 25

% of Total SKU Count
300
SKUs with Claim

700 20
25 250
% of Total SKU Count

600 200 15
SKUs with Claim

20 150
500 10
100
400 15 5
50
300 0 0
10
200
5
100
0 0
Natural No Dye Fragrance Free Biodegradable Hypoallergenic
(Product)

SKUs with Claim % of Total SKU Count SKUs with Claim % of Total SKU Count

Source: Euromonitor International

© Euromonitor International
6 Using Claims to Understand Consumer Demand and Build Successful Brand Strategies

Corporate social responsibility goals often dictate the direction of brands. For example, sustainability is
a key topic for companies as well as being top of mind for consumers, often impacting their purchasing
behaviour. Companies are interested in the most relevant categories to feature claims of sustainable
sourcing or packaging. They are keen to monitor how well a company’s vision and goals are reflected in
their brands.

As the next charts show, Euromonitor International’s product claims and positioning data helps explore
how prevalent Fairtrade or Utz-certified claims are in a given category, such as chocolate confectionery.
This allows companies to identify the leading brands making those claims.

Product claims and positioning data support branding initiatives, whether the focus is on clean label,
health and dietary labels or ethical labels. This helps brand and marketing managers decide which
resources to invest in and how to position their brand to align it with the overall corporate social
responsibility and company goals.

15 Most Prevalent Claims in Chocolate Confectionery Globally

E-commerce Presence in 2019

Vegetarian
Organic
Gluten Free
Fairtrade
Vegan
Kosher
No Sugar
No Artificial Preservatives
No Artificial Flavours
No Artificial Colours
Utz Certified
Dairy Free
No Gmo
No Added Sugar
Natural

0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000

Number of SKUs with Claim

Source: Euromonitor International

© Euromonitor International
Using Claims to Understand Consumer Demand and Build Successful Brand Strategies 7

Brand Share of Sustainably Sourced Chocolate Confectionery

Brand Share of SKUs by Fairtrade Claim  Brand Share of SKUs by Utz‐Certified Claim 
in Chocolate Confectionery Globally  in Chocolate Confectionery Globally 
(Number of SKUs with Fairtrade Claim: 7,063) (Number of SKUs with UTZ‐Certified Claim: 2,076)

Divine Hema
14%
22%
Green & Black's Kit Kat
Cadbury Nestlé
38% Frey
36% Cadbury Dairy Milk 11%
Vego Smarties

Seed & Bean Galak/Milkybar

16% Tony's Chocolonely Quality Street

9%
Alter Eco AH

Kit Kat Sarotti
2%
2% Ethiquable 7% Aero
2%
2% 6% 3%
3% Others Others
3% 4% 3% 5%
4% 3% 5%

Source: Euromonitor International

Recognise and seize opportunities

To remain competitive, companies and brands need to identify white space opportunities ahead of
competitors and capitalise on them quickly to secure growth. To do this, it is important for companies to
monitor emerging trends, changing consumer behaviour as well as altering market conditions.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly changed consumption patterns and heavily affected most, if not all
industries to some extent. The focus of many consumers has shifted, since COVID-19 has turned their lives
upside down and taken away the normality of everyday life. Driven by fears about the virus, preventative
health is now top of mind for consumers. Consumers now aim to stay healthy and protect themselves by
strengthening their immunity. Products that claim to support immunity health or contain ingredients that
are known to boost immunity are expected to thrive in the short to medium term.

Using product claims data, companies can identify categories where immunity system claims are most
prevalent and how many / which competitors are using these claims. Beyond immunity health, the
probiotic claim is also relevant in this respect. While companies are not allowed to make immunity claims
on the back of probiotics in most Western European markets, many consumers are aware of the suggested
link to immunity support. Gut health, which is also linked to a healthy immune system, has seen a further
push as a result of COVID-19 benefiting products that contain probiotics.

© Euromonitor International
8 Using Claims to Understand Consumer Demand and Build Successful Brand Strategies

Immune System Health and Probiotic Claims in Key Categories and Markets

Top 10 Categories for Immune System Health Claims Across Packaged Food, Soft 
and Hot Drinks Globally
Digital Share of Shelf in 2019

Liquid Special Baby Milk Formula
Liquid Growing‐Up Milk Formula
Sour Milk Products
Malt‐based Hot Drinks
Liquid Follow‐on Milk Formula
Goat Milk
Powder Follow‐on Milk Formula
Liquid Standard Milk Formula
Dried Baby Food
Carbonated RTD Tea

0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12%
% of Total SKU Count

Top 10 Categories for Probiotic Claims Across  Top 3 Brands with Probiotic Claims 
Packaged Food, Soft and Hot Drinks Globally in Drinking Yoghurt in China
E‐commerce Presence in 2019
Digital Share of Shelf in 2019
350 35

Carbonated RTD Tea 300 30
Number of SKUs with claim

Sour Milk Products
250 25

% of Total SKUs
Drinking Yoghurt
Dried Baby Food 200 20
Flavoured Yoghurt
150 15
Plain Yoghurt
Powder Special Baby Milk Formula 100 10
Other Plant‐based Hot Drinks 50 5
Powder Follow‐on Milk Formula
0 0
Chilled Snacks
Yili Jun Le Wahaha
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% Bao
% of Total SKU Count Number of SKUs with Claim % of Total SKUs

Source: Euromonitor International

Products that carry an immune system health claim can open opportunities for FMCG manufacturers to
reconsider positioning and claims of their products and brands. Brain, cognitive and memory health are
other areas offering growth potential for FMCG manufacturers in the future considering the interest in
mental health and wellbeing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Beyond using product claims information to adapt to changing market conditions, it can be used to analyse
opportunities for new product developments that address unmet market potential. Companies seek to
understand where to focus their product innovation efforts. Knowledge about the emergence of certain
claims in specific categories may indicate the development of a consumer need not being addressed.

Identifying white spaces is important to feed into R&D with respect to product formulation and resourcing.
Similarly, it will support marketing teams to create the right messaging around the new product and its
positioning.

© Euromonitor International
Conclusion

With consumers becoming increasingly sophisticated, knowledgeable and interested in particular product
attributes or ingredients, FMCG companies need to ensure they understand consumer demand to stay
ahead and outperform competitors. To grow, they must find the right positioning and the right way to
address consumers’ needs. Market intelligence on product claims and positioning can help companies to:

• Discover trends and emerging claims: Knowledge about leading claims in categories helps
companies and brands to successfully compete in the market they operate in. Aligning brand
and marketing strategies with claims that are trending allows companies to meet consumer
demand and improve brand performance. Emerging claims might provide ideas for new product
developments.

• Stay ahead of the competition: Making comparisons with the positioning and claims of
competitors enriches competitive analysis and helps to develop successful branding strategies.
Discovering claims that provide a competitive advantage can enable brands to enhance their
position. To go one step further, a company-wide analysis might even provide indications of which
strategic direction to take in terms of portfolio management in the future.

• Create branding initiatives and support wider company goals: Knowledge about trending
claims helps to align branding initiatives with consumer demand. Organisations can implement
company-wide CSR goals with smart positioning of products at the brand level, strengthening
corporate strategies.

• Identify white spaces and inspire innovation: Discover opportunities by analysing on-trend and
emerging claims as well as benchmarking against competitors. Unmet consumer needs can inspire
R&D activities for the type of ingredients, sourcing or packaging used.

• Set the tone for marketing campaigns: Knowledge of leading claims and positionings in a
category can inform marketing and advertising campaigns. This allows companies to implement
selective measures to successfully address the target consumers.

© Euromonitor International
About Euromonitor
International’s Product Claims
and Positionings Data

Euromonitor International’s Product Claims and Positioning System tracks product attributes and
claims across industries, categories, countries, companies and brands. Powered by artificial intelligence
extracting e-commerce data from 1,500 retailers, we gather information about product claims on a
SKU (stock keeping unit) basis. The number of SKUs with a specific claim in a category are tracked and
compared to the total count of SKUs in that category. The system provides a digital share of shelf for the
respective claim. The information is provided at category, company and brand level.

© Euromonitor International
How Can Euromonitor
International Help?

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