The Way Old People Shop

You've seen senior citizens shopping but have you ever experienced shopping through the eyes & motions as one of these "old people"? WSJ writes up an interesting piece about how Kimberly-Clark is moving forward in the "next frontier in retail".

Ever thought of doing & wearing this..."glasses that blurred his vision, slipping un-popped popcorn into his shoes and adjusting tape that bound his thumbs to his palms"? Todd Vang, a Walgreens VP, explains the different shopping experience he had when shopping like a senior citizen. Check out the limitations that are explained in this article & you'll be surprised about all the problems the 65+ crowd have with everyday shopping.

It will be neat to see what K-C & other companies do to help out this aging population...looking forward to seeing different merchandising strategies implemented in the future!

Dirty Diaper Wars!

Let's get real...how exciting can diapers be to market? Actually, there's a lot more going on behind the scene & fierce competition with head-to-head rivals Pampers (by P&G) & Huggies (by Kimberly-Clark).

Pampers just promoted its new reality webisode series "A Parent is Born" in Brandweek. The website shows parents tips on what to expect with newborns & to see what a day in the life is like. Here's an interesting statistic about diapers - "though the majority of consumers are cutting back on name-brand purchases during the recession, diaper sales continue to hold up relatively well, with 95-98 percent of households buying the disposable variety". Bet you didn't realize that!

Moving on to Huggies & Pull-ups - The Kimberly-Clark subbrands. Pull-ups also takes the consumers to see the challenges and triumphs of potty-training in The Potty Project. Granted, the Pull-ups are for an older age group of kiddies but still very similar ideas in both companies' websites.

Both companies are working on grabbing the emotional feel to keep the consumer loyal to their product. Loyalty to name-brands will help Kimberly-Clark and P&G throughout this recession & wish them luck with all the potty-training/diaper webisodes they create! The interesting thing to watch is whether it translates into an increase in sales...now that would be interesting to see!