New Product Growth in 2020

New Product Growth in 2020

March 2021   minute read

New product innovation drives excitement for shoppers and protects loyalty for the brand and retailers, especially when shoppers have a great experience with the new offer. In 2020, new items appearing in convenience retail topped 30,000 and accounted for more than $3.9 billion in channel sales.

Last year’s explosive new product growth tells two contrasting stories. The first is that traditional convenience categories topped the list for incremental dollar sales, and new products contributed to this happening. The top five categories, based on the incremental sales that all new products generated, comprised more than 80% of dollar sales, yet represented only 16.5% of new items by count.

The growth of category count tells another story. In 2020, convenience retail scrambled to add new items in categories that historically have not played a significant role in the convenience product offer. More than 50% of the new items introduced into the channel were from often-overlooked store categories: edible grocery (17.4%), health and beauty care (12.5%), non-edible grocery (10.7%) and general merchandise (10.2%).

Shoppers in 2020 turned to convenience retail to satisfy their need for new product innovation, which contributed to an exciting store experience. A deeper role operators can play is to stock products that shoppers often buy in traditional grocery stores. Then, evaluating the sales and margin potential of these items is an important next step for retailers seeking profitable store growth opportunities.

Source: NACS State of the Industry Report of 2019 Data, NielsenIQ

Note: New items are determined by UPCs with more than $100 in item sales for Total U.S. Convenience
for calendar year ended December 26, 2020, with $0 channel movement for the calendar year ended December 2019.