Chapter 2. Analysis of multisided platforms as a new tendency in consumer goods industry

2.1 Consumer products industry outlook: relevance of participation on digital platforms

Impetuous growth of platform economy is pushing many companies in different industries to rethink their business activity. While for some industries performance as multisided platform is quite evident (e.g. Airbnb as an accommodation platform, Uber as a transportation platform), for consumer goods companies it is not so obvious. However, shifts in customers' behavior are forcing FMCG companies to address to platforms as well in different ways.

Fast moving consumer goods industry is characterized by a short shelf lifecycle, low cost of production and high-volume sales. These are the products which usually compose people's shopping list (e.g. food and beverages, detergent, personal, oral and heath care products, cigarettes, etc.) and can casually fall into shoppers' basket in supermarket (e.g. occasional carbonated soft drink like Coke or a chocolate bar). However, today shopping patterns are changing and the purchase process does not mean just going to the nearest grocery or supermarket. FMCG brands face a significant challenge when they are trying to engage the consumers because of the specificity of the category - FMCG products are perceived as vital items, which people need to purchase on a quite frequent basis and which they often buy mechanically. Optimal balance between price and quality, as well as convenient physical availability are often enough to encourage them to keep buying the same brands out of habit.

The digital landscape provides wider choice, range of products and more delivery options to consumers. A modern buyer uses many different online resources to buy exactly what he needs at an attractive price. Today the line between online and offline landscape is blurred and, as a result, - the behavior of consumers becomes more comprehensive and should be carefully observed and investigated by manufacturers.

In the first chapter some drivers of modern consumption landscape were mentioned, so here we would focus on some of the trends in more detailed way to understand the portrait of modern consumer:

· Internet development. From the late 1990s to early 2000s the rapid growth of Internet has been observed. In less than 20 years the number of Internet users increased from 300 million people (5% of global population) in 2000 to 4,157 million in 2017 (54%), and that percentage is anticipated to increase to 58% by 2022 (Internet World Statistics, 2017).

· Electronic devices penetration. During the last decade, smartphones have become a must-have device for consumers worldwide: if in 2000s just 12% of people had mobile phones, today more than 60% do so (eMarketer, 2017). Such wide and fast spread of digital devices usage has resulted in people's dependence on numerous mobile applications, combining different aspects of consumers' life into several platforms.

· Online shopping and Internet of things (IoT). Many modern consumers shift from traditional brick-and-mortar stores to digital purchases due to improved payment and delivery methods, speed and convenience.

· Social media platforms. In the beginning of the century such well-known social media as Facebook, YouTube or Instagram did not even exist - today they are followed by more than 2000, 1500 and 700 million users respectively every month (Techcrunch, 2017). More than 2 billion people spend multiple hours on social networks chatting and sharing different content.

· Emergence of millennials and generation-Z. Being raised in the era of the Internet penetration, millennials (born between 1980s and the end of 2000s) and Gen-Z (born after 1995) are the most demanding, informed and technology-driven generation, formed a lot by the technology. More than 90% of people, falling into this age groups, own smartphones, what makes digital devices almost universe among these generation segment (World Economic Forum, 2016). Since millennials and Gen-Z amount together for a half of the world population (Nielsen, 2017), their behavior (namely preference of access rather than ownership, active social life and so on) determine the consumption modes of modern society. They have grown up with social media, what definitely influence the way they communicate, the speed with which they imbibe information and expect services, as well as their relationship with brands (The Social Element, 2015).

· Urbanization. It is assessed that about 60% of the global population will move to cities by 2050 (compared to 55% in 2016) (United Nations, 2016). It is forming over-congested cities, so the launch of innovative delivery models to satisfy the needs of modern people in fast and convenient consumption.

· Growing middle class. The quantity of people referring to global middle class is anticipated to more than double from 2 billion in 2012 to 4.9 billion in 2030 (Rohde, 2012). According to Nielsen consumer outlook, 49% of consumers have changed their spending habits to optimize their budgets and save on household expenditures, while 45% are going to switch towards cheaper consumer goods brands (Nielsen, 2016). The growth of this income group is boosting demand for cheaper products and services from emerging markets (like India and China) and explain more rational approach towards shopping.

· Experience economy. Shopping in the past used to be only about buying a product. Today it is not just transaction of purchase, it is a whole journey, where people value experience over things and personalized attitude from companies and brands. Each step of this journey is an opportunity for the company to strengthen the brand perception and encourage customers to return again and again. Technology plays an important role in this process, enabling people to navigate in the endless options of FMCG products and gain the suitable brand experience.

Consumer goods industries touch people's lives on daily basis in a way that not many other segments can do. Every day households and individuals use the products of different consumer products companies. At the same time, modern consumers actively use numerous platforms, websites, and mobile applications, enabling to improve their lives and many daily activities such as shopping and cooking. Since early 2000s consumers have got unprecedented access to information due to the rapid growth of Internet connectivity.

FMCG is a growing industry and electronic commerce is one of the main drivers of the development. Despite e-commerce accounts just for 4.6% of the fast-moving consumer goods market, FMCG online sales grew by 26% in 2016 and it contributed to 35% of the FMCG global growth (Kantar World Panel, 2016). Since FMCG industry includes different categories, the online purchase trend is not equally developing in all of them. While more than 40% of US consumers have ever shopped online in such non-food categories as health and household products, personal and animal care, food products are less popular (Graph 2). Despite e-commerce reaches a small part of grocery shoppers today (does not exceed 32%), manufacturers are investing significantly in this channel because it serves as the main driver to their future growth.

Graph 2. FMCG Categories Purchased Online

Source: Nielsen, Digital Shopping Fundamentals, 2017

In the era of the platform economy, consumer goods companies face some strategic questions: how to build a successful business processes via online channels? How to exploit the socially networked world to create new brands and categories? How to use existing technology-driven opportunities to understand customers better and communicate with them more often and more personally? To cope with these challenges, fast moving consumer goods producers like Unilever, Kellogg, Coca-Cola, P&G and many other companies are striving to implement their business into digital ecosystem. As it has been already mentioned in the first part of the paper, there are different types of multisided platforms which companies may address to (payment platforms, social media, retail marketplaces, etc.). In the next two subchapters we will look on two groups of them - social networks and e-commerce marketplaces - in more details to understand which role these platforms play in modern consumers' digital way to purchase and to figure out how FMCG companies use their business models to improve consumer experience and, as a target result, generate sales.

2.2 FMCG industry on social platforms (on the case of Facebook)

2.3 FMCG industry on electronic commerce platforms (on the case of Amazon)

During the last decades the retail landscape in fast moving consumer goods has been changing: despite traditional trade (namely traditional food stores, open markets, specialized shops, etc.) are still dominating in terms of a number of stores, modern trade channels (hypermarkets and supermarkets) are demonstrating higher sales growth (Nielsen.com). The next step is the growth of electronic commerce marketplaces, the relevance of which is explained by the fact that both small and large companies realize the advantages of combining brick-and-mortar stores and Internet-based platforms to meet the diverse needs of modern consumers, who value their time and convenience. Today the share of e-commerce sales in total retail sales is growing - in 2018 the number amounts for almost 12% and it is anticipated to increase by 4% more by 2021 (E-Marketer, 2017). For comparison, in 2013 online orders of packaged food and non-food areas accounted for 1% and 3% of total sales respectively (Alldredge, Newaskar, and Ungerman, 2015). However, some e-commerce giants have become notable players by performing through an online presence only. The first pure online marketplace, connecting millions of buyers with millions of sellers, was eBay, but the most well-known player and the biggest ecommerce platform today is Amazon. Started as an online bookstore, today Amazon is the global online marketplace dealing with every possible consumer good and service category

Like many other large modern corporations, Amazon started its business with the sale of just a few items in the garage. In 1994, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, Jeff Bezos decided to set up an Internet company. Once he read an article about the tremendous growth rate of Internet usage, amounted for 2300% annually (Forbes.com). Being judged by this statistical data, Bezos realized that e-commerce would become the next step of Internet-based business development. Initially Jeff compiled a list of twenty products available for sale on the Internet, but then he reduced the list, leaving only books and CDs, and, finally, stopped his final choice on the books. In July1995, the company Amazon.com, named after the South American river, opened its virtual doors to virtual visitors, providing them easy, fast and enjoyable way to purchase books via the Internet.

Amazon corporation has strengthened its position as a leader in the field of e-commerce and, due to expanding its product range and strategic cooperation, has become a virtual market. Amazon has become the biggest digital retailer worldwide, generating $178 billion in 2017 revenue (Digital Commerce 360, 2018), swelling more than 3 billion items for more than 310 million active consumers across 180 countries. The company is presented in 14 countries, including such big markets as the USA (the leading market, with the number of products coming to 564 million units), Germany, UK, France, Japan, also Australia as a new market and Brazil and Netherlands with Kindle and books sales only (ScrapeHero.com, 2018). Kindle is an electronic reader, created by Amazon, allowing users to browse, buy, download, and read various digital media through the digital books or mobile application. Thus, besides being an e-commerce marketplace for consumer goods, Amazon also competes as a media platform and search source. Due to its digital capabilities, at the end of 2017 Amazon decided to make a disruptive entrance to the European insurance market. So, we can see that Amazon is operating in completely different segments.

Within almost a quarter of a century Amazon has evolved not just as a retailer, but also as a marketplace, connecting numerous participants on its platform. The main difference, as it has been mentioned in the first chapter, is that Amazon as a retailer is acting as a reseller. And that was how Amazon initially set up its business - it simply started as a pipe, bringing the offline store model online. Amazon managed the role of producer by finding products, dealing with assets and inventory and, eventually, selling them.

Later, Amazon started firstly experimenting with implementation of some platform characteristics, namely users' reviews. Feedbacks could be created by consumers and after used by other users - in this sense, Amazon allowed value creation by client accounts on a platform. The main business continued to be a pipe, but it started to show the characteristics of the platform with the reviews.

The second step towards the platform thinking was to create collaborative recommendations in the form of buttons like «сustomers who viewed this item also bought…», «your recommendations», «frequently bought together», «you have recently viewed…», «recommended for you based on…» and other options. Amazon served as a matchmaker, using the data about consumer choice to match them with the right products. The more consumers used this feature, the more accurate and useful the collaborative filtering has become.

Therefore, Amazon's business gradually shifted from a pipe model to a combination of pipe and platform when Bezos launched Amazon Marketplace allowing external merchants to trade their products through Amazon. Amazon continued to play a role of a reseller, but it also allowed other producers and sellers to create and participate on the platform. It was the key transformation that moved Amazon's business model to a platform model (Platform Thinking Labs.com).

Amazon as a marketplace allows the companies to sell their goods directly to end-users. Revenue is generated through Amazon referral fee for using the Amazon channel and selling products to Amazon.com users (usually the commission for third party suppliers range from 6 to 20% of the Amazon products retail price) and some additional charges from sellers (Amazon Marketplace Strategy 2017).

To start selling on Amazon business, producers must complete 4 steps process (Amazon Services.com):

1. Register and create an account on Amazon.com;

2. Create the business profile;

3. Create a catalogue and add the list of products;

4. Start selling.

There are two modes which the producer can choose when selling on Amazon marketplace (Amazon Marketplace Strategy 2017):

· Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). This business model means that the manufacturer must ship its products to the Amazon fulfillment center, where the orders will be prepared on behalf of the seller. The seller is responsible to maintain a presence of the products on Amazon.com by stocking Amazon fulfillment centers with inventory. In this case companies are subjected to dome additional storage, shipping and other fees.

· Fulfillment by seller (FBS). The seller is taking all responsibilities on its products' listing, fulfilling, processing and returning orders. The manufacturer fulfils the order by himself, missing the Amazon fulfillment center, and then deliver it to consumers when the order has been received. It allows consumer goods companies to personalize their packaging and customer service. This help to drive consumer engagement, increase brand loyalty and differentiate from other brands and products sold on Amazon.

Amazon has changed its business model several times (from selling books to all categories around the world) and today its business model consists of many parts. Besides the role of the middleman, Amazon generates value from its Amazon Prime service - it is a subscription-based business model where users pay an annual fee to have free short-term delivery (two-day or even same-day) on eligible items and to get an access to streaming media (music or movies). This free shipping policy encourages the customers to purchase and, consequently, spend more. About 20% of all e-commerce orders are currently made on a subscription basis. The top subscription rates belong to non-grocery categories, especially to pet care (dry dog food and animals' treats) and baby care (diapers & wipes). As for food items, meal kits popularity is growing and represent the highest rate of subscription orders. Other FMCG groups of products, such as vitamins and men's razors are also demonstrating strong rates of subscription orders and take the 5^th and the 6^th places respectively (Marketing Charts, 2018).

The shifts in consumers patterns determine the popularity of such kind of online marketplaces. The main value of the marketplace for the end customers is that they can compare prices for the same goods from different suppliers and make the best choice. No offline store is able to collect thousands of sellers on its site. It allows shoppers to choose the optimal value for money among numerous sellers and products, get their purchases in a fast and convenient way and refer to reviews of other shoppers to make a purchase decision (Graph 4).

Graph 4. Reasons to Purchase Products on Amazon (% of respondents)

Source: E-Marketer, 2017

Amazon is not serving just as an intermediary between producers and final consumers. It also provides IT solutions, helping companies to respond to fast-changing market conditions. One of the most profitable division of Amazon's business model is called Amazon Web Services (AWS), which offers services in the field of cloud computing, access to storages, databases, content delivery services and other functionality that helps in scaling and developing the business. There are several examples of successful cooperation between FMCG companies and AWS (Amazon Web Services.com):

· Unilever company wanted to re-design its infrastructure and standardize their digital environment to support fast time to market digital approach. After implementing a trial version in a pilot country, Unilever deployed it to other regions. AWS Cloud helped to reduce the launch time for digital marketing campaigns from two weeks to two days on average.

· Kellogg company was looking for optimization of its trade spending on promo activities (such as coupons, special offers and pricing), sponsorships and each brand location on the grocery-store shelf. After using AWS in its trial version, the company saved more than $900,000 due to reduced trade spending, immediate data calculations and more effective use of resources.

Digital platforms like Amazon are seeking to innovative decisions, so some significant events also touched FMCG industry in the last years as well. To simplify the purchase of a variety of home products, Amazon has created special "smart" buttons, called Dash Buttons, allowing to order several types of products with one click. Dash Button and digital devices help consumers to replenish stocks of toilet paper, kitchen towels, coffee and other daily necessary items and products. The purpose of creating and implementing such buttons is to minimize the psychological barriers of customers while ordering goods via the Internet. Manufacturers are also benefiting, because with the help of the Amazon button, customers are becoming more loyal and closely tied to their brand. The implementation of Dash Button involves more than 250 different FMCG brands in different segments, namely: household dash buttons (Tide, Finish, Persil), baby and kids (Pampers, Huggies), beauty (Garnier, L'Oreal, Head&Shouders), beverages (Pepsi, Red Bull, Mountain Dew, Heineken), snacks and food (Pringles, Quaker, Mentos, Lay's) and so on (Amazon Dash Button.com).

Another Amazon innovative solution, both making the life of consumers easier and providing more opportunities for FMCG companies to promote their brands, include voice-activated devices like the Amazon Echo or Alexa. Such a voice assistant helps people to make orders, answer their questions, give recommendations, etc. (Warc.com., 2018). The system also allows the companies to build strоng engagement between consumers and the brands. Campbell, the American producer of canned soups, shared its recipe tool Campbell Kitchen via Amazon Echo to provide ready to cook receipts in the most convenient way. Asking «Alexa, open Campbell's Kitchen», or «Alexa, ask Campbell's Kitchen what's for dinner» for example, people get cooking options, which better suit personal taste and time preferences, and then they are guided through the whole cooking process (Amazon.com/ Campbells-Kitchen).

Amazon has built a strong reputation of the e-commerce platform among its users by providing satisfactory service and shopping process. Amazon continues working on making even better customer experience and increasing presence of the products sold through the platform. That is why Amazon made another step of business expansion, strategically important for FMCG manufacturers. In order to have a 360-degree view of its consumers, Amazon bought Whole Foods Market (American supermarkets chain of organic food) for $13.7 billion in 2017 (CNBC.com). Such acquisition provides a wide physical distribution network and an access to more than 80% of US shoppers. The grocery store will also serve as a foundation for the Amazon Go concept (another innovative solution of Amazon), as well as a platform of Amazon Fresh category delivery to homes and development of Amazon private labels products. While online grocery still has a small percentage of total grocery, Amazon will certainly affect consumers' willingness to try and adopt this way of grocery shopping in the future.

Evolving as the dominant platform for e-commerce, Amazon may also become a threat for other market participants since the company uses its dominant position to dictate its terms and prices to suppliers. In addition, it uses collected data from companies selling products on its platform to weaken them as competitors. A company that developed a popular product and uses the Amazon website to enter the market can suddenly find that Amazon has presented an almost identical version of the product and gave it the first line in search results.

Despite such a threat, participation in this kind of platform is quite attractive both for consumer goods companies and consumers, first because these marketplaces provide the participants wide selection of sellers, producers, buyers, markets and products. Being a data-driven marketplace, Amazon accumulates the information about the active shoppers and provides integrated recommendations through its recommendation engine based on users' purchase history and lists of reviews written by consumers who made purchases. Thus, the modern consumers' need in personalization of their shopping experience, as well as increasing companies' demand in information about their consumers, are satisfied by Amazon in a thoughtful way.

Chapter 3. Outcomes and recommendations

3.1 MSP business model for FMCG companies: threats and benefits of participation and recommendations for the companies

In the modern digital-oriented world, the platform-based companies are changing both the way how companies perform and how people consume and perceive the products. The cases of platform giants like Facebook and Amazon showed that they are playing a significant role in consumer-goods companies' interaction with their customers and they can offer interesting and innovative solutions to meet the needs of modern consumers. In this part we will summarize how the activity of MSPs influences the performance of fast-moving consumer goods companies.

In the 1.2 subchapter we illustrated companies' traditional value creation process as the following simplified steps: production, distribution, marketing and consumption. After the accumulation of the examples observed in the second chapter, we can point out the modes of participation on MSPs on each of the phases:

Phase of distribution. Online marketplaces are encouraging producers to rethink the traditional supply chain: there is no need to stand out on the shelf and fight for the best possible shelf allocation. The products may be easily ordered, individually packed (in terms of fulfillment by seller) or stored on Amazon warehouse (in terms of fulfillment by Amazon) and delivered directly to consumers in a perfect condition. The usage of technological devices like Amazon Echo eliminates the need of design and packaging, gaining the better share of shelves and other challenges for manufacturers since Alexa consumers are no longer searching for the products in the store. As for the content distribution, social platforms transform the way of how the message for consumers is created and delivered to their devices. In contrast to traditional advertising agencies or other media content creators, on social platforms the content creation and delivery are not really separated processes. Internet users participate in the creation of the content and facilitate the distribution to other members of online communities.

Phase of marketing. Social platforms serve as an effective tool in driving messaging for consumers. Being a part of companies' advertising campaign or playing a role of the only one promotion tool, social media increases the awareness of the brands and consumers' knowledge about the products. Despite online marketplaces serve mainly as an additional way of distribution the value to consumers, the presence of FMCG products on these platforms itself plays a beneficial role to producers. Since Amazon also performs the function of a search engine, location of daily consumed products on the platform increases the awareness of them in the minds of the consumers, the products may even be recommended for them by the algorithm based on historical purchases.

Phase of consumption. Modern consumers are becoming more accurate and attentive in the process of choosing products before making a final decision about the purchase. Social platforms allow to accumulate all necessary information to make a weighted consumer decision, while e-commerce platforms enable convenience shopping, delivery of products to consumer's doorstep and returning as convenient as possible, saving their time and energy (instead of going to the supermarket), what is so important for modern consumers.

Due to the integrity of the platform ecosystem, platforms' analytical tools, the algorithms of feedbacks and recommendations, companies can better and faster analyze the real impression and attitude to their products and implement the changes to their production phase.

Picture 6. Application of MSPs in traditional business models

Source: composed by author, based on references of the research

Thus, we can see that with the participation on MSPs, these processes (from creation of the product to its consumption) are becoming more interconnected. Despite addressing to the platforms on different stages or with a particular purpose (e.g. social platform as an advertising tool or e-commerce platform as an additional channel), it can influence other companies' business model elements. It may be largely explained by the fact that digital platforms become more multifunctional and actually do not belong to the only one sphere of activity. Facebook was initially created as a communication platform for student community - today it has evolved to the global multimedia ecosystem, that provides news, entertainment content and interactive experience. For greater convenience of social network users, Facebook created Messenger in 2011 and acquired WhatsApp in 2014 - integrated applications for instant interaction. While Amazon started as an Internet-based book seller, which has developed into both the largest online retailer in the world and a platform where third-party retailers can sell directly to customers, as well as the manufacturer of e-book readers and web services provider. Apart from its role as an online marketplace, it is also used as a popular information source to find ideas, compare prices or gather more information about the products, thus becoming a competitor for existing search engines (75% of Internet users use Amazon versus 85% of Google users before making a purchase) (Search Engine Land, 2017). Thus, despite in the first chapter the platforms' division by industries and consumers' activities was illustrated, now we can conclude that these borders are eliminating and the MSPs are becoming even more cross-functional.

Taking as a pattern the criteria of comparison the multisided platforms with the pipe type business model, we attempted to organize some similarities and points of differences for different types of MSPs, observed in the case study:

Table 5. Comparison of Social and Electronic Commerce Multisided Platforms

Source: composed by author, based on references of the research

Considering the cases in the second chapter and all the mentioned above, we may conclude that platforms provide significant benefits to consumer goods companies to improve their business activity, allowing them to:

· Start easily. The creation process of the business account consists only of several stages (in cases of Facebook and Amazon it is necessary to complete 4 steps). Moreover, just creation of corporate page and presence on Facebook cost nothing to the companies. Facebook revenue model is based on payments from advertisers, developers and other groups of participants, while for consumers (both individual Internet users and businesses) profile creation is out of charge. In case of Amazon and other e-commerce platforms, the cost of listing and presence may be free or depend on the number of listings and further orders.

· Find the target audience. In the competitive landscape of the FMCG industry it is crucial for the companies to address the right people with the right positioning. Both for small companies, penetrating the market, and big players, launching new products, platforms serve as a tool to identify the demand for the product and the right target audience, based on their interests, behavioral and demographic character traits.

· Reach the target audience. FMCG brands use digital platforms (solely or in the combination with traditional trade channels and advertising tools) to attract the attention of their consumers (especially, the millennials) who spend a bunch of hours surfing the social and e-commerce platforms daily. Moreover, for one specific FMCG category - namely tobacco - internet based platforms are the only source of conveying messages to their consumers. Because of the advertisement, promo, packaging and many other legal restrictions, cigarettes producers are actively using the Internet and social media to increase the visibility of their products and promote their brands.

· Increase brand awareness. FMCG companies are always enthusiastic about expanding their customer base and stimulating their loyal consumer to keep buying existing products or to try new launches. Since it is crucial for FMCG companies to continuously attract their customers' attention, online platforms serve as a great place to let people know about new promos, product novelties or simply remind them about the companies' mission and values.

· Build strong relationships with consumers and increase brand loyalty. Multisided platforms offer businesses an opportunity to personalize their messaging to individual consumers and appeal to their own interests due to direct interaction. Due to the strong engagement into digital platform community, people become more loyal to particular products and brands since they feel their involvement into companies' activity and mission.

· Innovative solutions to display brands and improve shopping experience. By connecting different groups of participants, MSPs are looking for ways to improve the experience of using the platforms for different groups of customers. To do so, MSPs develop and offer new interesting and innovative solutions to enable the communication between the groups. For example, Facebook «carousel advertising», which allow to tell a whole story to the customers through combining several images and video in a single ad unit. The «grab and go» concept, implemented with Amazon go retail model, will be very beneficial for well-known FMCG brands since shoppers will simply grab the brands they are familiar with and consequently pay less attention to lesser-known products on shelves. Innovative shopping solutions as Amazon Dash and Amazon Echo will increase in their popularity for consumers because they simplify the shopping process due to automatic replenishment and quick solutions, while for business they give an opportunity to promote their brands differently and provide the most convenient solution for their consumers.

· Gain real-time consumer insights and feedbacks. Online marketplaces provide space for consumers to leave their reviews about the products purchased, while social platforms give even more freedom to share the impressions not only about the goods, but also about the brand, companies' activities and campaigns. Due to such a live interaction on the platforms, the consumption is largely stimulated by users who left positive recommendation about the product.

· Expand globally. Reaching a wider scope of consumers may be called one of the key benefits of using online platforms. Online marketplaces allow FMCG producers to improve their physical and mental distribution on existing markets, as well as to expand their presence in other geographies. People all around the world are familiar with Facebook and its content, while presence on such international marketplaces as Amazon helps companies to organize and unify the selling process globally: consumers in 14 countries can purchase familiar FMCG brands on familiar conditions and service.