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How do CPG consumer insights drive competitive advantage?
Competition in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry has become extremely complex. So have the CPG consumer insights that can give consumer goods companies their competitive edge. An article entitled “overcoming the existential crisis in consumer goods” has even likened navigating competition in the CPG industry today to mixed martial arts. Twenty years ago, the game would have resembled the more predictable rules and strategies of a professional tennis match. Nowadays, FMCG companies must harness the power of complex CPG customer data and knowledge management to produce actionable CPG consumer insights that drive competitive decision making.
Below are three ways effective use of CPG consumer insights can help organizations deliver a competitive edge now and into the future.
Three ways CPG firms use consumer insights to deliver a competitive advantage
1. By driving spot-on personalized marketing to the consumer.
Traditionally, CPG companies took a one-size-fits-all approach to their products and customers, targeting the masses with little engagement and relationship building. Now, small disruptors easily puncture this strategy with direct-to-consumer marketing and sales channels. To compete, FMCG companies use CPG consumer insights for a more granular understanding of the customer.
When market intelligence is leveraged well, CPG consumer insights can uncover a 360-degree view of the customer. This way, insights teams can empower winning customer-centric decisions across categories, products, and segments — by speaking to customers through their favorite channels, addressing their current needs, and conserving their brand loyalty to keep them in your corner.
2. By helping predict future consumer behavior so they can stay ahead of the game.
When looking at how CPG companies can sustain profitable growth in the next normal, experts at McKinsey have stated that predicting your customer-of-the-future is critical for CPG companies to stay competitive as the world emerges from the pandemic. One key learning Consumer Goods firms will take away from the unpredictability of the last few years is the past is no longer necessarily a reliable predictor for future demand.
To overcome this challenge, companies must aggregate and harness a wide range of CPG customer data that tracks not only historical consumer goods trends but also economic variables like GDP and the consumer price index. Combine this with other CPG market variables like consumer sentiment, social listening, search trends, and category-specific data, and you’ve got a lot of information to deal with. The key for Consumer Goods companies to keep up with the competition is to quickly translate loads of CPG consumer insights data into actionable insights for the entire enterprise, kind of like how Colgate transforms trends knowledge into actionable insights at scale.
3. By expediting agile decision making, so they see more frequent wins.
The first several months of the COVID-19 pandemic were dizzying for FMCG companies; they were forced to expedite decision-making from months to weeks, so they could meet drastically changing consumer needs. McKinsey also argues that CPG companies that permanently adopt this agile approach to decision making will inevitably be more competitive in the future. To that end, data and knowledge management capabilities are becoming a critical advantage for Consumer Goods companies because they can more easily leverage consumer behavior, thanks to CPG customer data. When an enterprise “knows what it knows,” the business cuts out costly and time-consuming knowledge hunts and gets straight to valuable insights—the currency of decision making. With relevant, actionable consumer packaged goods insights delivered to the business regularly, FMCG companies can empower frequent, agile decision-making at scale.
How an insights engagement platform can help you leverage CPG consumer insights
A steady flow of timely CPG consumer insights data is pivotal to Consumer Goods companies discovering and acting on opportunities for growth before their competitors do. But the reality is, most FMCG organizations don’t have the insights capability to capture CPG customer data and knowledge, develop insights, and reach the business at the pace of the market.
Companies that invest early in an insights engagement platform will find they’re better positioned to quickly implement competitive insights-driven strategies. If they want quick, powerful, and actionable CPG consumer insights to inform their business decisions, they need a powerful insights infrastructure to facilitate it.
If you’re a CPG organization, an insights platform such as DeepSights can help you:
- Foster a consistent, clear view of your customer segments across your organization. With a single source of truth, your insights platform will help guide and align business teams to effectively meet consumer needs.
- Connect the dots between market and CPG consumer insights data for winning business decisions. When all your knowledge and market data sources live in one insights engagement platform, your teams can quickly triangulate insights for quality recommendations and decision making.
- Make quick decisions at the pace of rapidly changing local market dynamics and consumer expectations. An insights engagement platform enables relevant, noise-canceling insights curated and delivered directly to local teams and business units. Check out how the REWE Group delivers curated insights to the business with their Knowledge Hub.
- Democratize insights with self-service tools, so your business teams can get the answers they need when they need them. With an AI-powered search that makes searching for insights a breeze for business users, there are no more missing opportunities while you wait for answers to business questions. For example, Kellogg’s democratized insights with their next-gen insights platform as a solution to their scarce expert-to-stakeholder ratio.
Conclusion
In today’s hyper-competitive CPG landscape, consumer packaged goods insights are no longer a nice-to-have—they’re mission-critical. The ability to personalize marketing, predict future behavior, and accelerate decision making gives Consumer Goods companies a powerful edge. But that edge only sharpens when insights are timely, accessible, and actionable across the business.
By investing in an AI-powered insights engagement platform, FMCG organizations can move beyond data overload and unlock real business value, transforming insights into strategic action at scale. The winners in this space will be those who empower their teams with the tools to make faster, smarter decisions grounded in deep consumer understanding.
Meet DeepSights, your award-winning CPG consumer insights engagement solution
Market Logic’s award-winning insights engagement platform DeepSights helps leading CPG and FMCG organizations power insights-driven businesses that deliver rigorously to the needs of the market. Visit our case studies page for more information. If you’d like to see how our insights engagement platform works, don’t hesitate to request a demo today.
