Packaged Foods Industry Overview
Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the food and beverage industry has witnessed many challenges. The sudden decline in dining out and increasing focus on home-cooked meals caused a major rift in the growing food services market but propelled growth in the packaged foods industry. Consumers’ demand for convenient, hygienic, cleaned, and packaged food surged significantly over the past year. However, sudden growth led to more food and beverage industry players entering the packaged foods industry. Rising competition, renewed hygiene protocols, and consumers’ demands regarding cleanliness have made it challenging for companies to keep pace with the market and maintain competitive pricing, particularly during a highly impactful pandemic.
The most prevalent challenge in the packaged foods industry has been providing competitive pricing while logistical and raw material costs increase significantly due to the business implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rising competition has made it more challenging, and competitive pricing strategies have become necessary for packaged foods industry players. Many industry leaders leverage competitive pricing solutions from leading research firms to recover from the pandemic, keep pace with increasing costs, and competitively price their offerings.
The COVID-19 outbreak significantly impacted the food and beverage industry. To overcome the pandemic’s impact, maintain business continuity, and regain substantial profits, request a free proposal.
Business Challenges
The client, a packaged foods manufacturer, based in Northern Europe, noticed that increasing competition and changing prices had caused significant customer attrition. The manufacturer struggled to maintain speed and quality due to high costs and simultaneously match their competitors’ pricing in the growing market. Additionally, since the pandemic, consumers demanded healthier and safer alternatives, and the packaged food industry client’s inability to deliver immediately caused further monetary and market share losses. The client required a comprehensive understanding of their competitors’ pricing and supply chain strategies and ensured that their products met consumers’ changing preferences. Therefore, the packaged food manufacturer sought to leverage Infiniti’s competitive pricing solutions.
Through the competitive pricing engagement, the client also wanted to:
- Understand
competitors’ pricing strategies - Identify
unnecessary costs and mitigate losses - Develop a
successful competitive pricing strategy - Evaluate
and meet consumers’ needs with improved offerings
Request more information to learn how Infiniti’s competitive pricing solutions helped packaged food industry players increase their customer retention rate and overcome the implications of the pandemic.
Our Competitive Pricing Approach
Infiniti’s experts developed a comprehensive competitive pricing engagement to address all the packaged food industry client’s pain points and challenges and help them enter the post-COVID era with a strong foothold in the market. The approach included the following three processes:
- Our
experts conducted a pricing analysis to assess consumers’ reactions to various
price points in the market and evaluate competitors’ prices for similar
offerings. The competitive pricing analysis helped the client gain insight into
competitors’ pricing strategies and consumers’ preferences in the packaged
foods industry. - A
competitive benchmarking helped the client gain insights into their key
competitors’ and industry leaders’ supply chain strategies and understand how
they controlled costs, maintained quality, and speed while offering consumers’
favorable prices. The client also understood how to streamline their supply
chain further and significantly reduce costs. - Due to
significant market changes since the pandemic started, the client needed to
revamp its offerings to meet consumers’ demands. Therefore, Infiniti’s experts
conducted product research and helped the client understand how their new
offerings would perform in the market. This research included providing data
regarding consumers’ feedback, similar offerings in the market, and the
potential success or failure of a particular product.
Business Outcomes
By leveraging Infiniti’s competitive pricing solution, the packaged food industry client overcame the significant challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and renewed their strategies and offerings to meet consumers’ expectations. The pricing analysis helped the manufacturer identify consumers’ preferred price points, and understand their competitors’ pricing strategies, consequently enabling well-informed competitive pricing within the preferred range.
The insights from the competitive benchmarking study enabled significant supply chain improvements for the packaged food industry player. They renewed their supply chain strategies, identified better suppliers, increased transparency within the supply chain, and improved quality and speed with their new approach. Additionally, the product research provided relevant data regarding target consumers’ unmet needs and enabled the development of unique offerings in the highly competitive packaged foods industry.
Our competitive pricing experts also used the product research insights to help the client forecast revenue estimates and set competitive prices for their novel offerings. The competitive pricing solution helped the packaged food industry client overcome the implications of COVID-19, streamline their supply chain, significantly reduce costs, develop improved pricing strategies, and introduce offerings that targeted consumers’ unmet needs. Within six months of the engagement, the manufacturer started to regain its market share, improved its price points, increased customer retention, and successfully launched a new set of products that exceeded revenue expectations and received positive consumer feedback.
Staying a step ahead of competitors, evaluating consumers’ needs, and identifying changing market trends is imperative to growth in the food and beverage industry. Speak with our experts to learn how your business can achieve this and champion your sector with our market and competitive intelligence solutions.
