Consumer Products companies were not designed to navigate complexity at speed while maintaining economic control. But growth is becoming more fragmented, less predictable and increasingly shaped by platforms, retailers and AI. Scale, efficiency and broad distribution can’t determine success alone. Businesses must prove they can serve demand reliably, at pace and at an acceptable cost.
The new CP report shows how growth has moved into complexity, with opportunities emerging in hard-to-serve demand pools.
Concurrently, future advantage will come from speed through the right complexity, meaning companies that identify opportunities worth serving will outperform.
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Important growth opportunities for Consumer Products companies will be found in areas traditional operating models were designed to avoid. For decades, companies dominated through big brands, broad distribution and efficient, high-volume production, a model that worked best when products, processes and demand were predictable. Now smaller brands are taking market share.
View market share change by brand size (percentage points)
View average retail sales growth (CAGR, %) by brand size
Unnecessary pack or packaging variation
Overlapping SKUs
Fragmented specifications
Low value line extensions
Operational duplication
Inefficient manufacturing requirements
vs.
Channel specific propositions
Premiumization
Regional relevance
Rapid trend participation
Differentiated propositions
High value consumer missions
Consumer Products companies need to process more signals than their operating models were designed for. Most companies are transforming, but many are still improving tools around a model built for scale, stability and periodic coordination. AI can improve sensing and decision support, but not unclear ownership, weak governance or slow execution.
Share of companies per maturity stage
1%
1 Lights on
Share of companies in stage
Driving stability and business continuity
Maintaining day-to-day operations, with teams working largely independently and relying on manual processes; some baseline data, reporting, and controls; however, decisions remain fragmented and largely backward-looking.
73%
2 Incremental optimization
Reducing operating friction and amplifying outcomes
Building alignment across teams around shared priorities and key moments, improving coordination and increasing the use of data in decisions around common decisions, with decisions still negotiated function-by-function.
25%
3 Coordinated execution
Executing consistent, data-enabled approach/outcomes
Establishing and executing against an integrated commercial plan with shared planning cycles and aligned priorities informed by data and platform insights to deliver consistent and aligned execution and decision making across teams.
4 Synchronize intelligence
Making better, future-looking decisions faster
Integrating data, systems, governance, and teams into a unified growth engine that connects insights, decisions, and execution to support faster, and more proactive and strategic forward-looking actions.
0%
5 Self-Optimizing Ecosystem
Enabling always-on ecosystem optimization
Operating as a connected, AI-enabled ecosystem that automates execution and emphasizes strategic stewardship and orchestration, continuously improving decisions and performance across internal and external partners.
The full EY Reclaiming Relevance: sales and marketing in an AI world goes deeper into the forces driving change in sales and marketing functions and explores what leadership teams can do now.
850 Executive interviews and secondary analysis within 24 markets across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and survey results from more than 850 senior Consumer Products executives
More than 20 interviews with Consumer Products C-suite executives and industry analysts who provided deep insights into emerging challenges, decision-making dynamics and leading practices
Ignite relevance through supply chain in an AI world