Game: Uniform Game
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The Marketing Challenge Behind CPG Volume Growth
As the CPG industry confronts its post-COVID “new normal,” there is a clear imperative for stronger coordination between marketing and revenue management functions to drive consumption growth. This focus is necessary because volumes for CPGs will remain under pressure in the near term. In part as a response to significant price increases over the last…
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Winning the Uniform Prices Game
Imagine how frustrating day-to-day shopping would be if you had to haggle over every single purchase instead of paying what’s on the price tag or the price list. For the last 150 years, uniform prices have made commerce more efficient for consumers and businesses, because they often foster a sense of fairness and make prices…
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Corporate America tests limits of pricing power
Between the lines in the intriguing New York Times article below, I see two critical points about why the recent wave of inflation occurred and what will happen in 2024 and beyond. Recent inflation reflects a long overdue price correction, not a collision of macroeconomic forces. Prices were trapped in the opposite of a bubble,…
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Tipping at Self-Checkout
Pricing often seems like a dry, quantitative human activity subject to universal forces. That’s why it’s fascinating to see what happens when cultural traditions – not mathematical rules – influence how a company chooses its pricing model, and how that choice can have significant social consequences. Witness the practice of tipping, as this article in…
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The Omni Future of Retail
Rapid e-commerce growth rates are stabilizing in many markets, signaling the importance of balancing online and in-store sales strategies. Nielsen noted in its NIQ’s 2023 Consumer Outlook that in 2023, the digital and physical worlds of retail will merge in ways never seen before. Drilling down to the category-level sales performance indicates many categories have…
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Blended Meat and Sustainability
Why do meat products seem to violate one of the most powerful effects in That is a question the marketers of blended meat – a combination of meat and plant proteins – will need to answer if they want their category to establish itself. The powerful “compromise effect” explains why consumers tend to find the…
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Fragrance market
The market for fragrances exemplifies why companies should understand their market characteristics carefully rather than assume a certain market structure can or should exist. This recent report from Circana – the company formed by the merger of consumer insights firms IRI and NPD – describes the fragrance market as having a growing luxury end and…
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Wealthier shoppers at the Dollar Tree
Is persistent inflation luring wealthier consumers into the dollar-store market? Their share of shoppers earning over $100,000 per year is growing, and slightly wealthier consumers are the fastest-growing demographic at Dollar Tree stores. In the meantime, Dollar Tree’s pricing seems to occupy the best of both worlds, with options at the low end and an…
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McCormick moves prices higher
How much longer can consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies continue to drive higher profits through higher prices? The recent quarterly results of spice maker McCormick seem to show that the trend is still going strong, but the aggregate view masks some underlying trends. Overall, McCormick’s price increases continue to drive higher gross margins, but performance…
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Consumers aren’t buying cheaper cereal
Breakfast cereal exemplifies the ongoing transition period for many food and grocery products. are recalibrating their behavior and their value perceptions after a couple years of rising prices, a trend which I view as an overdue correction. companies in turn are shifting their focus to growing volume. normally cut through the noise in the Uniform…
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Can Wendy’s make surge pricing a success?
Can Wendy’s make “surge pricing” a success? The restaurant chain recently announced plans to implement dynamic pricing starting in 2025. At first glance, that seems like a non-starter. Imagine that you kindly let someone cut in front of you at Wendy’s at lunchtime because you are not sure what to order. A minute later, you…
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The Uniform Game: Pricing for all
In this second episode of the Game Changer Expert Interview Series, BCG’s Jacqueline Martinez explains how intelligent analytics can drive winning strategies for companies of any size in the highly competitive Uniform Game. To learn more about strategic pricing and the new book from BCG’s pricing practice. As part of the Game Changer Expert Interview…