Household cleaners

Discount Store News, Oct 20, 1997

Tide's popularity continues to surge.

A record 76% of retailers named Tide a top performing brand in household cleaners, up from 72% last year, making it, once again, the No. 1 brand in the category. It has held this distinction for the past five years.

Tide was favored by 34% of consumers, down slightly from last year.

A leading Power Brand, Tide has an Index score of 315, 10th out of the 39 brand names on this year's list.

Tide's appeal is nearly consistent across all age groups in the survey. Thirty-five percent of Boomers surveyed said they prefer Tide, compared to 33% of Busters and 30% of Empty Nesters.

Among discounters, Clorox is No. 2. It gained ground this year with 49% calling it a best-performing brand, compared with 38% in the 1996 survey. Lysol edged out Clorox as the No. 2 brand among consumers with 12% of mentions.

A near Power Brand, Lysol received strong support from consumers but weak support from retailers. Lysol proved the most popular with germconscious Boomers, with 12% saying it was their preferred cleaner. With 10% of mentions, Clorox, Dawn and Windex tied for third.

Dawn is the most popular with Boomers, as 13% of them said it was their preferred brand.

Dawn, though, lost standing with retailers this year, with 18% calling it a top preferred brand, compared with 26% in last year's survey. Among Busters, just 5% said they preferred Dawn.

Slightly more than 14% of Busters said they prefer Windex, compared with 13% of Boomers and under 3% of Empty Nesters.

All and Cascade fell off the list, replaced by Downey and Formula 409, each with 5% of consumer mentions.

Private label household cleaners appeal to about 53% of consumers surveyed. Slightly less than half of them, 48%, said they would buy another brand or skip making a purchase if their chosen household cleaner brand couldn't be found.

But when it comes to purchasing, consumers clearly want brand names. A very high percentage of consumers, 90%, have a brand preference when shopping for household cleaners, ranking third out of all 26 categories surveyed.

They also said they were fairly confident of finding their favorite brands at retail.

Household cleaners had a confidence rating of 8.14 (out of a nine-point system in which nine means total confidence), the third highest rating of any product category in the survey a

Discounters

Brand                1997     1996

Tide                  76%     72%
Clorox                49      38
Windex                19      14
Dawn                  18      26
Pine Sol              17       9
Cheer                 15      21
Lysol                 14      10
Downy                 13      --
Purex                 13      10
Formula 409           10      --
Discount Store Shoppers

Brand               1997      1996

Tide                  34%     39%
Lysol                 12      14
Clorox                10      11
Dawn                  10      12
Windex                10       5
Comet                  9      10
Pine Sol               6       8
Colgate Palmolive      6       7
Downy                  5      --
Formula 409            5      --