CPG 101
What is CPG?
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and the CPG industry refer to the products that are purchased and used in everyday life. CPG includes products such as food and beverage items, beauty products, cleaning supplies, clothing items, and more. These products are often intended to have a shorter shelf life and lifespan and are usually expected to be used soon after their purchase.
The CPG industry is one of the most competitive industries in the world. New brands and products are constantly being introduced and shelf space is limited. CPG markets have experienced remarkable diversification and growth over the last decade, but with so many alternatives for virtually any product, brands must find ways to position their products as effectively as possible to win over retailers and buyers.
But how can brands gain the best competitive advantage? By fully utilizing and understanding their data to tell compelling sales stories.
How Is Data Supplied?
Data is one of the most powerful assets for any CPG brand. So how and where do brands get their data?
Syndicated Data
Syndicated data is an aggregated collection of product retail sales activity across a chosen set of parameters and has the potential to track industry trends along any scale of your choosing.
Syndicated data can only be made available to CPG brands thanks to the efforts of data syndication companies (NielsenIQ, IRI, or SPINS). These third-party organizations collect comprehensive CPG metrics across a wide range of retailers and customers, aggregate relevant data points, and provide access to CPG manufacturers.
Syndicated data can then be broken down and categorized within two unique channels:
1. Syndicated Store Data
Syndicated Store Data combines useful product details such as sales trends, competitive analyses, distribution, price, and promotions. Since this data cannot be provided by any single retailer alone, it is collected and aggregated by third-party syndicated data companies.
2. Syndicated Panel Data
Syndicated Panel Data tracks customer behavior and provides retailers and marketers with an overview of user demographics, brand loyalty, store loyalty, purchase frequency, and any number of conceivably useful shopping preferences. Syndicated panel data is collected by third-party syndicated data companies through a demographically balanced household sample.
Retail Portals
Retail direct data provides information about a specific product from a particular retailer. Individual retailers can provide sales information, often through their own web portal, about a specific product’s performance throughout their location(s).
Harmonizing Data
Data harmonization is the process of unifying differing data sets (fields, formats, dimensions, columns, and other characteristics) into one aligned data set. Since the data is sourced from a variety of suppliers, the data sets will rarely have the same format and will need to be unified. For CPGs, this process is essential to get the full picture of their product(s) performance.
Simply putting all of the data together into one set or creating a massive data lake isn’t enough. Data harmonization improves the quality, accuracy, and utility of CPG data. Unifying the various data sources into a singular data set makes retail and sales data “analysis ready”.
How to Utilize Harmonized Data
Once the data has been harmonized into a singular source, analyses can be done to identify trends and glean insights.
Bedrock makes it easy to utilize your harmonized data. Our AI-driven platform and bots, Jake and Sofie, can help guide you through making sales decks for presentations, import your data to be used in our Storyboard functionality, and monitor the performance of your brand and products. With Bedrock, you can easily conduct category reviews, identify opportunity and market gaps, and review your promotion performance in a clean, customizable dashboard.