There’s little doubt about it: PMPs work!

With our ground-breaking trial of price-marked packs (PMPs) with Wrigley now at an end, we can conclusively reveal that price-marked packs work!

by Antony Begley

As highlighted in the last issue of SLR, we embarked in August on a semi-scientific trial with our partners Wrigley to attempt to gain some sort of definitive answer to the question ‘Do price-marked packs work?’

The mechanism was straightforward: sell plain packs for five weeks then swap them directly like-for-like with price-marked packs. Nothing else was changed. The products inside were the same, the number of facings was the same, the sitings in-store were the same. Literally the only thing that changed was the fact that the plain packs were swapped for PMPs.

By the time the last issue of SLR went to press we hadn’t quite completed the second five-week period to enable us to compare apples with apples. That period has now completed and we are able to bring the full results… We chose four hanging bag lines for the trial:

• Starburst Fave Reds 150g Bags
• Skittles Fruits 125g Bags
• Skittles Crazy Sours 125g Bags
• Skittles Fruits & Sours 100g Bags

When we calculated the results through the Epos we could hardly believe what we were reading. Sales of Starburst Fave Reds 150g bags rose by over 148%, while the ‘smallest’ increase we had was a whopping 58.8% on Skittles Fruits & Sours 100g Bags!

We had been concerned that while we may sell more volume we would be losing out on cash margin because PMPs carry smaller PORs – but with increases of that magnitude, that particular worry was soon swept away.

We had anticipated sales increases but I don’t think either the team at Woodlands Local or Wrigley themselves anticipated sales hikes running into the hundreds of percent.

The big question is what we now do going forward. Many of our confectionery lines are already PMPs but we may now decide to convert as many as possible to price-marks. If we can achieve sales hikes of even half this level we will be perfectly happy.