CPGs really want consumers to buy more

Many CPGs started 2025 aware that they couldn’t keep banking on price hikes to achieve revenue growth. Now, after a year of tariff-related uncertainty and declining volumes, even in non-discretionary categories, CPGs are realizing they need to quickly figure out a way to get alienated shoppers to buy more of their products.

At this year’s CAGNY conference, and on recent earnings calls, CPGs have harped on their aim to drive volume growth as consumers have made the strain of price increases clear with smaller basket sizes and waning loyalty.

PepsiCo is a clear leader in this effort, last month slashing prices for its popular snacks like Lay’s and Doritos, which it said was a response to consumers’ financial pressures. The move, CEO Ramon LaGuarta said at CAGNY last month, comes as the company is feeling “friction” from low- and middle-income shoppers and wants to “reignite the volume of the category” and increase household penetration.

So far, it’s paying off.

“The consumer clearly is telling us it was the right thing to do,” LaGuarta said.

Other CPGs have similar goals: Kraft Heinz and Mondelez were among those that spoke of a need to crank up their volumes at CAGNY, too. It’s a necessary change for CPGs, John Mercer, head of global research at Coresight Research, told Retail Brew.

“After multiple years of really underwhelming unit growth overall and really quite aggressive price increases, the CPGs need to fight back for unit growth,” he said.

Buying in: Over the past several years, CPGs have been riding the wave of inflation following the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was first driven by supply chain tumult and higher commodity prices. Topline growth has come largely from higher prices, while unit sales have declined or flatlined, making it clear that some CPGs pulled the pricing lever “slightly too far,” Mercer noted.

“We seem to be reaching a limit in how much consumers can absorb CPG price increases without pushing them more toward private label,” he said.

CPGs are now at a crossroads, forced to find a way to get consumers who have started buying less or trading down to purchase more. Price drops like PepsiCo’s are an obvious way to do this, and we may see CPGs becoming more competitive on pricing “selectively,” Mercer said, but adding new product innovation, marketing, and an emphasis on value could help CPGs, too.

Speaking volumes: CPGs have been candid about these volume shortcomings and the efforts they’re putting in to turn things around.

At CAGNY, General Mills announced it cut its fiscal 2026 guidance, with CEO Jeff Harmening noting a “volatile consumer environment” that’s hindering its volume recovery. The Cheerios maker’s volume has recovered over the past 18 months, from down 4% to down 0.5% after readjusting prices across its North American retail portfolio, addressing “key price cliffs” and closing gaps between competitors, Dana McNabb, group president for North America retail and pet at General Mills said.

“Had we not taken the pricing action we have taken, in a market where consumers really are interested in value…volume would have been the same or a little bit worse,” Harmening said, with McNabb also noting General Mills will make “big bets” on innovation this year.

On its earnings call last month, Dirk Van de Put, CEO of Oreo maker Mondelez, noted that consumers are “fed up with the price increases,” but said the company doesn’t feel pressure to drop prices to the “magnitude that I heard from another company.” Weeks later at CAGNY, he outlined a volume-focused growth plan centered on rethinking its price-pack architecture, with efforts like launching more under $3 snack packs aimed at drawing in cash-strapped shoppers, Van de Put said.

Kraft Heinz, too, emphasized “volume-led” growth at CAGNY, fresh off the news the company wouldn’t split in two and instead invest $600 million across marketing, sales, and R&D. CEO Steve Cahillane said the company would “invest in opening price points”—a trend that he said Kraft Heinz hasn’t taken part in enough—to bring consumers into its brands. The company won’t be conducting widespread price reductions, however.

Outside of food and beverage, Unilever, too, said volume growth is “the most important metric in the company,” a change from an “inconsistent” focus on it in the past, CEO Fernando Fernandez said. Innovation will drive growth, Unilever USA president Herrish Patel said, with its deodorant pipeline this year two times the size it was in 2018, for example.

But, but, but: The recent Supreme Court ruling striking down President Trump’s sweeping tariffs likely won’t have a clear impact on CPGs’ pricing efforts. That’s especially true for food and beverage brands, whose supply chains tend to be more local. Furthermore, Trump’s subsequent 10% global tariff—which he says he intends to raise to 15%—has complicated hopes for relief, Mercer said.