Optimising the promotional price and frequency for a frozen pizza brand has led to incremental sales

Background

• As part of the range update for Frozen Pizza, ISS reviewed the customer performance of all key brands following the strong impact of the When in Rome brand being placed on deep discount
• McCain and Dr Oetker are the other key brands in the category, with Dr Oetker appealing to more affluent Frozen Pizza customers

Key insight

• Since the start of the When in Rome’s promotion the Dr Oetker SKUs have been performing very poorly with a strong drop in customers
• While Dr Oetker have blamed this poor performance exclusively on the When in Rome promotion, the performance is just as likely to be due to a large drop in the number of promotions
• The decline has seen customers switching to both McCain and When in Rome, further indicating the negative impact of the rapid decline in promotional activity

Outcome

• The recommendation was that Dr Oetker needs to increase its promotional activity following a lethargic past several months
• The Dr Oetker SKUs have subsequently been run three times at a deeper $4 promo point as well as a recent $3.50 promo point in line with the launch of the range update.
• The deeper promotions have delivered improved results, with the $4 promotions delivering average weekly sales of $9.9k (and the subsequent $3.50 promo $1.6k)
• This compares to an average of just $617 in weekly promo sales at the $5 price point