Insight & strategy Working on wellbeing Holland & Barrett has used insight to refocus on what matters to customers, shifting its approach to pricing and informing how it communicates. Georgina White talks to Katie McQuater W hen I sit down with Holland & Barretts director of customer experience and insight, Georgina White, she is 18 months into the role. In spring 2022, when she joined the health and wellness retail business from BT, the insight team had five members. As of November 2023, it had 23. Set up to both guide core business performance and to drive the strategy and transformation of the business, the team is agile, covering research, market intelligence and customer analytics. Were pretty young as a team theres a huge amount of transformation to be done in terms of capability, says White. This includes building a new market insight capability something the business hasnt had in the past and establishing how to better leverage its own customer data, as well as bolstering customer experience, implementing how it measures and improves marketing effectiveness, and assessing what the companys strategy means from a customer perspective. On top of this, among Whites key areas of focus for the next financial year is the need to ensure the team is driving customer performance; making sure customers are embedded into overall strategic priorities; extracting the value out of capabilities including customer data; and establishing an inclusive, supportive environment for the team one that helps them act as partners to the business. Thats a pretty broad list. Arguably, its probably similar for a lot of insights teams, White says of the four priorities, but adds: The bit that makes us perhaps a little bit different is where we are in our maturity, as such a new team, and the fact were probably trying to do it all at once. There are lots of plates spinning because were trying to become a source of competitive advantage as quickly as we possibly can, and that means a lot of things that we are building from scratch. A question of cost Not long after joining Holland & Barrett, White was faced with a challenge. At the end of 2021, the business had changed its pricing and promotional strategy. At the time, there was a small insight team, so the decision was made without robust testing. Fast-forward into 2022 and there was a belief that sales had been impacted by that decision, explains White. So, as a team, we rallied round to figure out what was going on, what was driving our pricing and promotional changes and what needed to happen. And, as in all good stories, we had a very short period of time to do it. I think we had two weeks. Whites division wanted to understand the role of promotions and pricing for customers what was appealing for them, and examine what, if any, impact the previous changes had made. Inside the organisation, there was a lot of noise as to what action should be taken and we wanted to cut through that noise, says White. The team carried out an evaluation that involved reviewing existing data including market intelligence and owned customer data as well as commissioning primary research and brand tracking. It also examined the potential impact of the cost of living, carried out a monadic test over a two-week period via one of its agency partners and surveyed customers no longer shopping with Holland & Barrett. As a result of the evaluation, White says the team identified that the company did need to change its promotional strategy. They then modelled the change before taking the insight to the senior leadership team, to help them understand the impact. The insight team recommended a range of new mechanics that the business has implemented, and that have increased performance quite significantly, according to White. They also busted some myths: We killed some of the ideas that were running around the business that werent customer-led. We were able to stop an incorrect decision being made. In addition to these recommendations, the team found an opportunity for a new range of own-label value vitamins, which was launched in December 2022 and highlighted the companys response to the cost-of-living crisis. The move also contributed to an improvement in price perceptions and sales performance, according to White. What started as a relatively simple but fairly contentious, Whats the impact and what should our promotional strategy be? came back to a customer-led range of promotional mechanics that were deployed successfully. It led to development of a new product range and having more clarity on the strategic problems and opportunities facing our customers, and it resulted in the business getting behind what was a simple piece of work of what insight could do and how it could work successfully, she says. Lastly, White says the research also showed an opportunity to improve how Holland & Barrett communicates its value as well as the efficacy and relevance of products an insight that 28 Impact ISSUE 44 2023_pp28-31 I&S Holland and Barrett.indd 28 05/12/2023 12:08