FMCG companies need to constantly think about how to launch products to stay ahead of changing consumer trends, volatile economic situations or tech advancements. This requires insight into new product development (NPD) activity.
Businesses should be tracking launches in their industries as well as adjacent categories, which can help inform their innovation roadmap. However, this information alone might not give them the full picture. Why?
Because monitoring which of those new products sustain or expand market presence—and which ones quietly disappear—is equally crucial. This concept is called staying power.
What is staying power?
Staying power refers to a product’s ability to maintain its market presence and continue to be available for purchase by consumers over time. This measure helps assess the resilience and enduring appeal of a product.
New products often enter the market with strong publicity and can receive significant attention online. However, are those launches staying on shelves or continuing to attract consumer engagement? That is the important question to answer. For example, the German energy drink, Engie, entered the market in August 2021, but struggled to resonate with a young consumer target audience. As can be seen in Euromonitor International’s Innovation dataset, it was already unavailable across major retailers by May 2022.
To truly grasp the dynamics of staying power, it is crucial to delve into some revealing data.
Nearly 75% of the 82,000+ new products launched between January 2022 and April 2024 were still on e-commerce shelves at the end of April 2024, according to Euromonitor International’s Passport Innovation platform. So, approximately one in four product launches during this 28-month period disappeared from the market.
Several factors influence staying power, which is why this becomes challenging to measure the further one goes back in time. For example, in 2022, only 64% of the nearly 38,000 new product launches in 2022 were still available online in April 2024.
However, tools such as Passport Innovation can help businesses measure and track the markets, categories and attributes of products that matter most to them.
Factors influencing staying power
Staying power can drastically differ by industry or category, so it is important to have the right benchmarks for the sectors businesses compete in to understand what success looks like.
Take packaged food, for example. This industry has one of the lowest staying-power percentages in Euromonitor International’s sample due to rapidly changing consumer preferences, razor-thin margins from fierce competition and the regulatory environment—to name just a few factors. In contrast, pet care records a higher staying power at 78%, because of consistent demand and high brand loyalty. Owners could be less likely to switch brands once they find a product that caters for their pet’s needs.
Benefits of tracking staying power
Understanding the concept of staying power and the importance of having benchmark metrics for a business’s category or industry can help set expectations. But tracking this data by country is just as beneficial for companies launching new products.
Every country is different with unique cultural and retail landscapes. The US is a key driver of innovation in the FMCG world where margins are aggressively battled for on a daily basis. That means staying power is more challenging to achieve in this market compared to a country such as India, where the FMCG marketplace is expanding vastly, and new products have a wider consumer base to resonate with.
Remember: not all products are going to resonate immediately or to the same degree. Some innovative launches need time to build consumer awareness and reception. This is why companies need to understand the typical time period required before discontinuing a product or allocating resources to a different initiative. Tracking the longevity of products helps them stay attuned to changing consumer preferences and gives them insight to assess the long-term viability for such a significant investment.
While not all product launches will succeed, failing to grasp the concept and importance of staying power can prevent a product from even having a chance. Set your go-to-market strategy up for success and see how Passport Innovation can support your product development plans.