If there’s one area Amazon has made strides in in 2016, it’s with selling more of its product through subscriptions. Maybe it’s the push of a button or the ease of Amazon’s website, but cxtonsumers are now programming in their orders of common household items in droves.
As far as Proctor & Gamble is concerned, though, shoppers might as well cut out the middleman.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the consumer goods conglomerate is offering shoppers in the Atlanta area the ability to sign up for a subscription to its laundry detergent products, dubbed the “Tide Wash Club.” Also, in Chicago, P&G has started testing the “Tide Spin” program, where users can schedule laundry pickup and delivery through Tide-branded couriers.
It’s all part of what a P&G spokesperson said was the company’s commitment to use “every opportunity we can to learn about consumer habits and practices and our experiences on Tide are consistent with this.” The spokesperson also let slip some of the impetus behind P&G’s sudden preference for programmatic commerce — namely, the 3.2 million subscribers that upstart competitors, like Dollar Shave Club, managed to steal away from the company’s market share without much trouble at all. In 2010, P&G claimed about 71 percent of the men’s razor and blade space in North America, but five years later, that figure had fallen to just 59 percent.
“[Dollar Shave Club] was probably on the radar, but we weren’t necessarily having the right conversation around what might disrupt us,” an anonymous source told WSJ.
Selling its own products via subscriptions can only help P&G’s mission to block out smaller players, like Dollar Shave Club, but once it enters that arena, it better be ready to butt heads with fellow giants, like Amazon, who’ve been selling subscriptions for a while.
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