Nothing wrong with being consistent There's something like...

Nothing wrong with being consistent

There's something like 2,000+ supermarkets in Australia as well as however many chemists etc. So I reckon it is hard for any one of us to extrapolate a "big picture' from what we may or may not see on the shelves.

People keep bringing up ANZ retail and what they see as an indicator. At the risk of also sounding like a broken record I just want to see figures that would allow a like for like comparison between A2 and other competitors in ANZ retail.

Market share in ANZ retail seems like a good indicator. We know that the ANZ retail market has shrunk without daigou. That will inevitably mean a smaller pie for everyone. What matters to assess performance is how much of the pie A2M is still able to capture.

Put it this way. If you were seeing what you see in your area, but A2M was growing market share in ANZ retail (excluding daigou), you would accept that the overall strategy must be working right? Similarly if they were completely hemorrhaging market share in ANZ retail I would think that area has been managed poorly. If they're treading water and maintaining market share, I think that would be an acceptable outcome given they also converting lost daigou sales into CBEC sales in China.

As for A2 Gold, I don't know how you could know it has cannibalised Platinum sales. Actually to me, from what you are saying, it sounds like there could be a strategy there i.e. switch out A2 Platinum with A2 Gold in areas where there wasn't much demand for Platinum. Just another possible interpretation to consider, but I don't know enoguh about the demographics of the areas you're looking at to know if it might apply.

In general though it is a good strategy to have multiple product 'classes' targeting different levels of willingness to pay. You accept a little of cannibalisation around the thresholds of those tiers but theoretically this is outweighed by the new customers brought in for whom the Platinum price point was too high. A2M is good at retaining new customers and brand loyalty. So in my view its well worth the risk and also far too early to tell if it has paid off or backfired.