But just want to get a sense on how you think about that going forward?And if I can slip in a second part, are you comfortable you’re getting a strong ROI on the higher ad spend? Presumably, obviously, you did this quarter, but how do you think about that going forward and sort of ROI on any spend that may be opportune or incremental to what you originally expected?Andre Schulten Good morning, Dara. We would expect progress on the gross margin side. Actually we’re encouraged by the productivity numbers that have helped us on top of pricing to deliver the first modest increase in gross margin after a very long period of heavy cost headwinds impacting us to the negative side. And as we’ve done this quarter, we will continue to look for value creating opportunities to reinvest.We firmly believe the reason why we are able to grow the top-line at the range we are growing, the reason why we are able to hold volume share and value share globally in a very tough environment is because of our superiority-driven innovation across product, package, communication and retail execution.
And we believe that as pricing goes into the market and the consumer is even more, I think, sensitive towards the value equation that they are being offered, continued investment across all of those vectors is going to create value and serve us well going forward. So, we will maintain the flexibility to do so, but we will do it in a disciplined and in a very ROI-driven way as you say.As to your second part of the question, as ad spending becomes more efficient with our ability to in-house both scheduling and buying of media, more digital capability to be more targeted, that increases the ROI of every dollar we can spend. So, it actually makes investment in media spending more attractive. At the end of the day, we will maintain the concept of balance between top-line growth, bottom-line growth and cash generation to stick with our ongoing growth model and value creation model.Jon Moeller Just building on Andre’s points, which I fully agree with, I want to come back to this notion of balance and our commitment to it.
Some of you have heard me talk about this probably many times, but it’s worth repeating, so you understand how we’re thinking about things.We have a chart that we use with the leadership team every time we gather, which shows what you would have to believe to deliver top total share shareholder return, which is our objective entirely through the top-line or entirely through the bottom-line. And to do it entirely through the top-line, you’d have to assume that we can grow 8% from an organic sales standpoint each and every quarter, which is in our view unrealistic. If you try to do it entirely through the bottom-line, you’d have to assume that you could expand margins 180 basis points per year. So five years, 10 margin points in a highly competitive industry where it’s taken us 187 years to build 22 margin points, equally unlikely.So, we are very committed to driving both top-line and bottom-line.
It’s the only way we see to get home. I have a trite little saying that we use on occasion, which is “Top-line with no bottom-line, a waste of time. Bottom-line with no top-line, just a matter of time.” We’re going to continue to operate in that vein. And if we’re successful, you’ll see top-line growth driven by proper levels of investment and bottom-line growth and margin expansion — modest margin expansion.One last thing on the point of advertising rate of return, or ROI, in addition to what Andre was talking about, we simply have, though maybe hard to believe, a lot of low-hanging fruit that’s out there. We have many categories where we are not at our target levels of reach. And that’s a very high ROI activity when we can reduce wasted frequency, reinvest that into expanded reach, very good things happen.
As you’ve seen, by the way, not just this quarter, but for the last four years. And there’s no reason to change that approach at this point in time.Operator The next question comes from Steve Powers of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.Steve Powers Hey, thanks, and good morning. So, overall volume this quarter came in roughly in line at least with our expectations, but both price and mix delivered upside, which I think implies just better structural elasticity than we were expecting. And I guess the question is, as you balance everything, just your relative confidence that, that can continue? On the one hand, you have some tailwinds for sure as China comes back and service levels seem to be improving, your reinvestment rate is admirable as we’ve been talking about.
But there’s obviously uncertainties out there. And so, I guess, maybe just a little bit of perspective on your overall confidence and where that confidence is more versus less elevated?Andre Schulten Good morning, Steve. I’ll try a careful balance here between giving you perspective on the global basis and not letting you get ahead of yourself in terms of expectations. But the volume decline is better than we would have expected, as you said. Our elasticities remain favorable on an aggregate basis. And if you look at global markets, we actually see a volume consumption stabilizing. So, you would have seen in previous quarters global volumes across our categories down roughly 3 points to 4 points.In our most recent read, which is the past one month, volumes were actually down 70 basis points.
This is market volume. And if you exclude Russia, probably more around flat. That’s with China returning to some level of growth, and it’s also with pricing moving into the base. So, we’ll see as pricing becomes more annualized, we’ll see that stabilization. I don’t know if it’s going to continue to be neutral. I would expect some level of negativity in terms of overall market volumes, but certainly improving sequentially.Within that, I think we’re taking comfort in the fact that we are able to hold global volume share and global value share despite significant pricing that we have taken, which has enabled, as we said, we believe by our superiority strategy, a strong vertical portfolio, both tiers and price points and being present in all channels where consumers want to shop.
In our biggest most important market, as we had in our prepared remarks, we were able to grow volume and volume share, 90 basis points over the past three months. So that’s the positive side.On the negative side, Europe continues to be a high-pressure environment. We’ve been able to grow sales 8% in focus markets, but that it was a very strong pricing contribution with negative volumes in the range of 7%. And the European consumer is trading into private label. We see the price differential between private label and branded competitors increasing as private label is delaying price increases. The consumer continues to be under pressure there. So that’s going to be a continued headwind, I think, from the volume side.Overall, I think our outlook is balanced.
As we said, we expect market growth to return to 3% to 4% on the value side and there has to be a positive volume component to that going forward, but it will take a few quarters before we get there.Operator The next question comes from Kevin Grundy of Jefferies. Please go ahead.Kevin Grundy Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone, and congratulations on another strong set of results. I thought maybe we could spend a moment on China and the reopening there. Of course, given the importance of that market for you guys, being the second largest market behind only the U.S., so up 2% sequential improvement, which is encouraging, we see that in the China retail sales, including cosmetic continues to show sequential progress. You’ve been consistent about your target of mid-single digit growth for that market longer term.
