How Sanofi used shopper research to tackle a decline in category sales
24 October 2023Sanofi, multinational pharmaceutical company, noticed a drop in laxative category sales and wanted to understand what macro-trends were causing this.
The challenge
As category sales decreased, Sanofi sought help from IGD’s shopper research experts to find out why. They also wanted to quantify changing consumer/shopper habits around healthy eating (i.e. eating more fibre, natural ingredients) as they hypothesised this may have had an impact on laxative use.
The solution
Our experts delivered a month-long programme of shopper research to help address Sanofi’s challenges. This included:
A curation of primary data to identify health and lifestyle trends. All sourced from IGD’s shopper insight platform, ShopperVista
A review and analysis of technical papers, with reference to the key hypotheses
In-depth quantitative research conducted with constipation sufferers (sample: 400) via an online survey. The results were benchmarked against the general population and ShopperVista insights. The findings helped Sanofi better understand consumers’ behaviours, attitudes, and purchase decisions
Key results
A detailed picture of the laxative category and reasons for a decline in sales
A deeper understanding of the consumer shift towards healthy eating
Insight-led recommendations on what actions Sanofi could take next. This included messaging to highlight the promotion of new products, considerations for using certain food products in NPD, and help in educating consumers