P&G Leverages Shopper Insights for New eStore

For the consumer goods company, direct-to-consumer selling has become a necessity as the competition against retail store brands heats up. In fact, 25 percent of the consumer goods manufacturers surveyed for the "2010 Sales & Marketing Report" from CGT and IDC Manufacturing Insights (due out June 2, 2010) indicated intentions to explore direct-to-consumer approaches in the short term. Third-party sites, like Alice.com, eBay and Amazon.com, are options, but industry leader The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is exploring another approach.

Today, P&G and PFSweb Inc. announce that a new online shopping site is now available for U.S. consumers. Named the eStore (www.pgestore.com), the online shopping site is owned and operated by PFSweb and will feature the breadth of P&G brands, including Tide, Pampers, Olay, CoverGirl, Swiffer and Febreze. The eStore has been created with shopper insights to provide a premier online retail site with the goal of offering new and better ways to shop online for household, beauty and grooming products.

"The U.S. eStore is an exciting initiative that we feel will help us listen, learn and collaborate with online shoppers to find new opportunities to serve consumers' household, beauty and grooming needs," says Kirk Perry, P&G's vice president, North America. "Through our partnership with PFSweb and on-going testing with consumers, we envision the eStore will help deliver new tools, services and features that can ultimately be shared with retailers to provide a real convenience and value for shoppers, while also delivering innovation for the industry and specifically for our product categories."

The eStore's main function is to act as a "living learning lab" for developing e-commerce innovation to win with shoppers. Shopper insights will continue to be a strong influence in the eStore's ongoing development to help deliver tools, features and expertise that are great for consumers and also create value and sales for PFSweb, P&G and P&G's retail partners. P&G's collaboration with PFSweb on its eStore launch boosts P&G's commitment to drive innovation in online retailing efforts. eStore shoppers will continue to see new services, features and tools that come directly from their input and suggestions. P&G will also share these learnings with other retailers, maximizing consumer experiences for P&G products across a variety of retailer platforms.

Prior to the national launch, the eStore enlisted 5,000 shoppers to help guide the design and development of the "ideal" online shopping site. Their input affected site changes and enhancements found on the eStore launch site, including intuitive navigation to find products easily, as well as the ability to navigate by promotions and coupons. These online consumers also helped identify preferred products to feature on the site and to date, more than 300 new P&G products have been added to the eStore from shopper requests.