Overview of the Consumer Goods Industry

The consumer goods industry typically consists of main groups including appliances, food and beverage, toiletries, and cosmetics. This sector is also the foundation of the modern consumer economy as it not only drives massive amounts of money into other businesses like retail and advertising but also generates an enormous portion of the gross domestic profits for countries across the globe.

Over the past few years, the consumer goods industry has been proliferating as establishments in this industry space have started developing innovative products to meet the ever-increasing needs and desires of the customer across the globe. These establishments have rapidly expanded into the booming consumer markets of the developing world and have aggressively built a global scale across the value chain to make to make their firms profitable.

Let’s take a look at some of the critical factors that are expected to influence the growth prospects of the consumer goods industry in the coming years.

• Varying Consumer Demands: Over the past few years, consumer preferences have significantly transformed and moved toward sustainable and healthier options. As a result, consumer goods establishments need to be consumer-focused and dynamic as the demand from the consumers is fluctuating rapidly. Furthermore, the success and profitability of firms in the consumer goods industry space are dependent on how they address the changing needs and demands of the consumers in a cost-effective method.
• Decreasing Operating Margins: Consumer goods companies need to take into consideration the instabilities in the pricing of oils and their effect on transportation costs. This is because there is an increase in the need to ensure the distribution of high-quality products while focusing on innovative ways to cut costs.

These factors are forcing companies in the consumer goods industry space to leverage solutions like category management studies. Category management studies help firms operating in the consumer goods space to build category relationships with customers and boost business performance across business units. These solutions also allow clients in the consumer goods space to optimize cost structures, efficiency and, the effectiveness of businesses.

The Business Challenge and Journey

The client, a leading player in the consumer goods industry, wanted to develop a category vision and driver menu, along with market activation tools to launch the approach across 30+ countries. The client also wanted to build the skills of customer and category teams in the markets, to improvise the way of working and build category partnerships with customers.

To help the client drive category growth across 30+ countries, SpendEdge tailored a comprehensive research methodology. The research approach comprised of primary and secondary research coupled with qualitative and quantitative data collection procedures.

During this category management engagement, the consumer goods client developed a comprehensive toolkit that included driver selection, market assessment, and customer presentations. The client also gained actionable insights into a menu of tactical initiatives, category drivers, and guidelines that covered all channels and market types.

Key questions answered in this category management engagement include

The Results

This category management engagement enabled the consumer goods client to position themselves across many markets and change the approach and behavior in managing the category with customers. This lead to immediate gains for their category across the globe.

To know more about our category management solutions