Perceptual Map - Baby Diapers!

Baby diapers are an essential product for any parent with young children. With a two-year at boy home, and a second boy expected this Spring, we are no strangers to diapers at our house. Like many new parents, I had zero appreciation for the wide range of brands, features, and price points until we began purchasing carloads of diapers for ourselves. This blog post is a brief introduction to several brands of disposable diapers so that any future parents can be one step ahead of where I was.

There are numerous options when it comes to disposal diapers. For this analysis, I selected five major brands that can be found in many area retail stores or online. I was hoping to discover what features were most important to consumers and how the different brands stacked up. Most people are familiar with the two major brands that have long dominated the US market: Pampers and Huggies. These two brands alone capture nearly 80% of US market share and are owned by consumer goods giants Proctor & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark respectively. Figure 1 shows how the two brands have competed over the years:

Figure 1: P&G Pampers VS. KC Huggies

Kirkland is a newer private-label brand that is sold exclusively at Costco stores. Seventh Generation and Honest Company are even newer brands that are targeted at socially conscious and environmentally sensitive consumers. Each of these brands represents a much smaller market share, but when combined with other similar smaller brands can have a meaningful impact on the industry.

To understand the differences between the five diaper brands, I searched popular parenting websites for comprehensive reviews and created the following Table 1 using this data. The column on the left lists six attributes pertaining to diaper quality. The numbers to the right are rankings on a 1-10 scale for each of the six variables for each brand. I then added a cost per diaper and approximate market share for the five brands.

Table 1: Diaper Brand Quality Rankings, Cost, and US Market Share

Next, I chose to create a perceptual map to provide a visual representation of how the five brands compare. By using an average of the six attributes shown in Table 1, I determined a composite ranking for the overall quality of each brand. Quality was then assigned to the x-axis of the map, and cost per diaper was assigned to the y-axis. The third characteristic depicted in the map is the approximate US market share which is shown by the size of the bubble. The perceptual map is shown below in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Perceptual Map

There are several takeaways from the map above. First, it is easy to see that Seventh Generation is leading the pack in both quality and cost. They may be a small player, but seem to have carved out a niche for themselves. Second, it’s surprising that Honest Company is priced slightly below Seventh Generation, yet appears far behind its direct competitor in quality rankings. Perhaps there are key attributes (such as absorption) that the Honest Company has not yet mastered. Third, it is interesting to see how the two leaders Pampers and Huggies compare. Pampers currently enjoys the greater market share and charges more per diaper, yet their quality is only marginally better that Huggies. Perhaps their strategy is to stay just ahead of their major competitor in terms of quality and use this to promote brand loyalty.

Fourth, and finally, Kirkland is a surprise to me for being near the bottom on the price scale, yet ranked second in overall quality. I have read a conservative estimate that a child will use 5,000 diapers between birth and 2.5 years. By selecting Kirkland over Pampers or Honest Company, a parent could save $450-$600 per child and have better quality diapers during that period. Perhaps the Kirkland pricing is skewed because it does not account for the annual cost of a Costco membership, but still the Kirkland brand should not be overlooked by consumers or the competition.

Here is a screen shot of my social media post: