In today’s CPG and retail landscape, uncertainty is the only constant. From fluctuating consumer sentiment to shifting purchase priorities, brands must stay agile — and that requires actionable, real-time insights.
In our recent Fuel Cycle webinar, “Beyond the Shelf: Insights Teams Empowering Retail & CPG Excellence,” we gathered expert perspectives from CPG leaders navigating today’s market turbulence with confidence, clarity, and consumer focus. Hosted by Polly Speros, CRO at Fuel Cycle, the conversation featured:
- Sarah Snudden, Head of JDE US Consumer Insights
- Catherine Fox, Brand Director, Licensing & Branding at Welspun
- Dawn Slown, Director of Customer Experience, Fuel Cycle
Together, they explored how insights teams are adapting, innovating, and becoming indispensable to strategic business decisions. Below are some of the top takeaways.
1. Consumer Sentiment Is Volatile — and Insights Are the Anchor
Fuel Cycle’s own data, aligned with external benchmarks show a clear trend: economic outlook is declining across demographics. Dawn Slown states that “consumers are becoming more deliberate and discerning… they’re watching their pennies across every category.”
As a result, brands are doubling down on consumer insights to adapt product messaging, packaging, and positioning in real time.
2. Trade-Offs Are Inevitable — But Loyalty Is Still in Play
Consumers are making value-based decisions — whether it’s brewing coffee at home instead of stopping at a café, or delaying a home goods purchase until it’s absolutely needed.
At JDE Peet’s, Sarah Snudden sees this firsthand in how consumers evaluate the “coffee job” — whether it’s energy, routine, or indulgence. “For some, it’s a functional caffeine fix. For others, it’s recreating the café experience at home,” she noted. Understanding these emotional and rational drivers is key to long-term brand relevance.
Similarly, Catherine Fox of Welspun emphasized the role of pulse surveys and agile research to track shifting priorities. “I absolutely adore pulse check-ins,” she shared. “Short, intentional surveys help us understand when consumers are making trade-offs — or just holding off.”
3. Community-Driven Research Builds Connection and Longevity
Both Sarah and Catherine emphasized the strategic value of Fuel Cycle-powered communities. These communities allow for authentic, ongoing relationships with consumers — not just transactional surveys.
From open forums and share-backs to user-generated content like “show us your bathroom towels,” the approach is human, dynamic, and emotionally resonant. “We try to think about it as a real relationship and conversation,” said Sarah. “Retention is higher when we remember what respondents told us before — and build on it.”
4. Insights Teams Must Be Strategic Advisors — Not Just Data Providers
To be truly indispensable, insights teams must bridge the gap between customer voice and business strategy.
Dawn Slown summed it up powerfully:
“When communities are treated as an extension of your brand, not just a place to run surveys, the insights become deeper, and the data becomes more actionable.”
Sarah Snudden shared an example from her earlier career: a heritage cleaning brand was facing pressure to reformulate based on survey feedback suggesting that consumers wanted light, fresh scents. But a deep-dive study with their most loyal users uncovered a different truth — that the brand’s bold, signature scent symbolized pride, discipline, and home care excellence. These insights directly influenced the brand’s strategic decision to preserve the core product experience and reframe its messaging for a niche but passionate segment of users.
The lesson? Surface-level data can miss the mark — real insight comes from listening deeply and understanding context.
5. In Times of Budget Compression, Communities Are a Resilient Investment
When budgets tighten, research can be the first to get cut — but that’s a mistake. Communities offer a cost-effective, always-on channel to engage customers and test ideas when ad hoc methods stall. Sarah summed it up well:
“Having a community in place means we’re already committed to consumer closeness. We can pivot quickly, even when the market shifts overnight.”
Watch the Full Conversation On Demand
Whether you’re leading insights at a CPG brand or supporting strategy in retail, this discussion offers real-world guidance and inspiration.
Watch the full “Beyond the Shelf” webinar recording:
FAQ
Why are consumer insights especially critical for CPG brands right now?
Consumer sentiment is shifting faster than traditional research cycles can track. Economic pressure is making shoppers more deliberate across every category trading down, delaying purchases, and reassessing brand loyalty in real time. Insights teams that can surface these shifts quickly give CPG brands the ability to adapt messaging, packaging, and positioning before a competitor does.
How are CPG brands using pulse surveys to stay ahead of shifting consumer priorities?
Short, high-frequency pulse surveys allow brands to monitor trade-off behaviour and sentiment movement without waiting for a full research cycle. Rather than fielding a comprehensive study every quarter, teams like Welspun’s use targeted check-ins to understand when consumers are holding off on purchases or substituting one behaviour for another and adjust strategy accordingly.
What makes insight communities more valuable than one-off surveys for CPG research?
Communities enable an ongoing relationship with consumers rather than a series of isolated transactions. When members feel known when previous responses are referenced and built upon engagement deepens and the data becomes more authentic. Brands using Fuel Cycle-powered communities have found that this continuity produces insights that surface emotional and cultural drivers that transactional surveys routinely miss.
How should insights teams position themselves within CPG organisations facing budget pressure?
As strategic advisors, not data providers. The teams that survive budget compression are the ones that connect consumer voice directly to business decisions demonstrating that their work influenced a positioning call, a reformulation choice, or a channel strategy. Communities are particularly defensible in tight budget environments because they replace multiple ad hoc studies with a single always-on infrastructure that costs less per insight over time.
Can surface-level survey data lead CPG brands to make the wrong decisions?
Yes, and the risk is significant. Aggregate survey findings can point in a direction that contradicts what a brand’s most loyal consumers actually value. The example from the webinar a heritage cleaning brand nearly reformulating based on survey feedback, only to discover through deeper research that their signature scent was central to brand loyalty illustrates exactly this. Deep qualitative engagement with the right segments often reveals that the insight sitting below the topline is the one that actually matters.
