Product Un-Melting Pot

While recently, due to increase in smaller stores, the number of products in the average supermarket fell in 2015 to 39,500 from 47,000 in 2008 – the number of products has increased dramatically since 1975 which averaged 8,948 average supermarket products.

Battling for attention and space on store shelves is an endless war amongst CPG companies.

Innovating with new products and packaging is a necessity to capture more of the consumer’s wallet and stimulate revenue growth.

Consumers are willing to try new products and pay more for new, special features – while the 80/20 rule applies here too as 20 percent of products make up roughly 80 percent of sales.

So, what does all of this mean?

It means that CPG companies will continue to aggressively innovate products and packaging in order to gain attention, interest, decisions, and purchases – just as they have for the past 20 years.

But, how do you close a market that’s in constant flux and aging?

Aside from researching the perfectly positioned message, color, change in flavor, or feature – it all comes down to how quickly you can execute, measure, and re-execute your ideas based on success and failure.

Quickly reloading, deploying innovations to store shelves based on data is critical.

What is your current timeline or cadence for conceptualizing and executing product innovation? What are the key elements and milestones involved? Which of these elements can be deployed faster?

Speed is a critical element of success in many aspects of life. How quickly and nimbly CPG companies can execute product innovation will determine their level of success or failure.