Magazine: WCleaning products: is the 7-year boom over?

In 2016 sales of cleaning products improved by 2 percent – in terms of value sales the category has been developing steadily since 2010. However, in the first half of 2017 this growth trend came to a halt. The positive sales trend of former years was primarily the result of price increase, as cleaning product volume sales didn’t change in this period. Another source of the increase in value sales was a structural change: the share of toilet rim block and cleaning wipe sales – these are rather expensive product categories – got bigger.

Nine from 10 households purchase some kind of cleaning product every year. 60 percent of households put general cleaners and toilet rim blocks in their basket, but the other categories are only purchased by no more than 30 percent of the households. As for buying frequency, some kind of cleaning product is bought 8 times a year, but with the exception of the two biggest segments, the various categories are only purchased 1-2 times a year. In addition to toilet rim blocks and cleaning wipes, innovative segments include various spray-type products, which are purchased by half of the households. //

Albert Szőke
senior product consultant
GfK