Confectionery giant Mondelez (formerly Kraft Foods), is eyeing cross-category confectionery placement in the duty free and travel retail channel, following successful ‘virtual studies’ that led to theoretical increases in sales.

Mondelez World Travel Retail (WTR) invited DF&TR press to a tour of its research and development facility at its Cadbury plant in Birmingham, UK on Tuesday when the division also gave some insights into it’s the confectionery category and its plans.

One key element is leveraging cross-category sales. Piotr Pilui, Category Development Manager at Mondelez World Travel Retail WTR explained that in the test – where four bestsellers from the Mondelez range were placed in beauty or liquor areas – the sales uplifts were strong.

Speaking to TRBusiness, he said the test – done in March – was not in a real store but a virtual one involving 200-300 people from four nationalities: Brits, Indians, Chinese and Americans. They were given various virtual shopping options in a game-like scenario where confectionery was placed in the beauty or liquor areas – and also on its own.

Pilui said that in the case of Toblerone Tiny and Naps lines placed in a beauty environment there were incremental uplifts for both confectionery (+9%) and for beauty (+7%). Mondelez has been in contact with several DF&TR retailers about its findings and – assuming beauty brands can be accommodated when it comes to their demands for the right in-store adjacencies – the company hopes to see its own confectionery brands for sale in a perfume and cosmetics department of one DF&TR location in a ‘real world’ test very soon.

TOBLERONE SHAPE AND SIZE UNCHANGED IN TR

In separate news, the WTR division also confirmed to TRBusiness that there would be no change to the sizing, weight or shape of its bars in DF&TR – which would have been a risky strategy for the top-selling confectionery product in the channel.

The confirmation follows the recent uproar in the UK domestic market after Mondelez changed the iconic triangle ‘multiple peaks’ shape of two lines in the range (400g and 170g) to reduce the number of those peaks (and thus the weight and cost) – but kept the same price and size of packaging.

In a statement on its Facebook account last week, Toblerone said: “We appreciate the passion of Toblerone fans around the world. Due to rising costs in making our chocolate, we recently announced a weight reduction in two Toblerone bars. The 400g bar was reduced to 360g and the 170g bar, sold in the UK only, is now 150g. Our other bars remain unchanged. We will never compromise on taste, nor our famous Swiss quality and can assure you that the Toblerone recipe hasn’t changed.”