NEW 2026 CPG Signal Advantage Whitepaper

Consumer packaged goods companies are entering a more complex era of competition.

For decades, scale, distribution, advertising reach, manufacturing efficiency, and category management created durable advantages. Those capabilities remain important, but they are becoming less sufficient on their own.

Consumers are more price-conscious, health-aware, digitally influenced, and willing to switch among brands, channels, and product formats. Retailers are using transaction and loyalty data to strengthen private-label portfolios. Emerging brands can identify niche demand and build awareness more quickly through digital channels. At the same time, many established CPG companies face pressure on volume growth, household penetration, and returns from traditional innovation.

In this report, alternative data refers primarily to external or nontraditional datasets—such as transaction, search, social, mobility, pricing, review, weather, and digital-shelf data—that supplement a company’s internal sales, consumer, and operating information.

Alternative data broadens what CPG leaders can observe. AI provides the intelligence layer that interprets those signals and translates them into scenarios, recommendations, and action.

👉 Download our new whitepaper that examines how alternative data and AI are reshaping retail strategy in the AI shopping era.