Today’s CPGs face numerous types of challenges
Challenges All Over the Map
Spatial analytics allows CPGs to overcome these key business challenges and become spatially aware, eliminating guesswork and reliance on a less-than-complete picture of their customer locations and market dynamics.
Paving the Way for Spatially Aware Decisions
Using small-scale surveys and panels will not provide the agility of insight that CPGs need. CPG companies are now building out fully fledged data science teams rather than relying on more simple business intelligence departments to get insights on consumer behavior. This means they are acquiring much larger, sophisticated datasets in order to feed their models.
Spatial analytics platforms use a wide range of first-party data about:
CARTO for CPGs lets brands tap into the power of spatial analytics, leveraging integrated customer segmentation, mapping solutions and POS analysis — along with visibility on the strengths and weaknesses of in-store placement — to maximize the performance of their products with more location context. With the CARTO for CPGs analytical platform, asset data and key product measurements are the catalysts for identifying primary and/or secondary audiences. Enriched spatial insights can guide decision-making and open doors to opportunities in often-crowded markets or new territories.
Designing an optimal route strategy entails ensuring that the right products are at the right stores and that the sales and marketing approaches align with individual store segments as well as customer segments. CARTO gives CPGs the capability to align consumer segments with stores and select the right products and strategies for rollout to retail locations around the world.
Making Geospatial Accessible for CPG's
CARTO’s one-stop shop for enriched global geospatial data, including demographics, segmentation, and human mobility data, gives users a deeper understanding of their customers. CPGs that harness the CARTO platform get faster, better insights from rapid analysis of mapped data to uncover trends as well as key site selection, geo-marketing, and forecasting intelligence.
Data Observatory. With more than 11,000 datasets, CARTO’s Data Observatory provides global coverage for geospatial data, helping CPG companies to identify consumer segments, align consumer profiles to stores, and track changes over time. Sociodemographics, mobility trends and visits, POIs, spending patterns, consumer profiles, weather patterns, and geosocial trends are all available.
Analytics Toolbox. A series of cloud native functions to address the key analytical use cases in CPG. Our integration with Python brings maps and spatial analysis into data science workflows. Integrating CARTO into Python Workflows saves data scientists time and energy—no need to export datasets as files or retain multiple copies of data.
As a cloud-based solution, CARTO for CPG can be launched anywhere, seamlessly integrating with existing data sources and within any cloud environment.
See how some CPG and retail brands are putting CARTO to work.
CARTO Up Close
COCA-COLA BOTTLERS JAPAN
Optimize network of 700,000 beverage vending machines across Japan, by assessing locations where they are positioned, gleaning understanding of their performance, and adjusting locations as needed
MARS
Predict machine performance and pinpoint strategic, revenue-generating locations for expansion
Foundation to grow to 5,000 click-and-collect locations over three-year period
Harness spatial analytics and location data to determine which and how many KFC, Pizza Hut, and/or Taco Bell stores to open, and where
Energy prices are at an all- time high, which has only exacerbated the existing challenges of the supply chain crunch and the pandemic. Consequently, traditional channel approaches that once worked for CPGs no longer do. At the same time, as companies undergo transformational change, digital twin modeling is becoming a critical need for CPGs and other enterprises.
Data poses difficulties
of CPGs cited data collection, activation, and scaling as key obstacles to achieving their marketing goals.
of CPGs are struggling to scale capabilities across their business.
of CPGs believe advanced analytics are critical to their competitive edge.
74%
89%
90%
Roughly
With spatial analytics capabilities, CPGs take a winning approach to their brands. For example:
Possible new customers, enriching market research and understanding better potential retail customer locations
They also utilize third-party data, such as:
Existing retail customers, like customer locations and point-of-sale transactions per product per store category
Up-to-date sociodemographics to segment customers
Mobility data (e.g., foot traffic or road traffic) specific to each store
Financial spend data by location
A CPG company in the alcoholic beverage space can gain an understanding of consumption patterns, then harness human mobility insights to adjust its distribution and point-of-sale strategies to meet demand and maximize sales in key markets and locations.
A manufacturer of personal care items and cosmetics can respond to reduced demand for its products sparked by the work-at-home trend by using home and work activity data to visualize locations where consumers are starting to return to physical workspaces.
A manufacturer of organic brands that needs to know where demand for organic food is higher can access real-time, spatially based behavioral data to visualize where target consumers live relative to where its products are sold.
Traditional shopper insights won’t do the trick
Rapidly rising costs
Internal data silos, lack of visibility and insight into retailers’ point-of-sale data as well as consumers’ habits, and impediments to accessing third-party data remain significant roadblocks for most CPGs. But CPG companies need consistent data across “territories'' — from financial, human mobility, road traffic, demographics, and behavioral data to data pertaining to housing, points of interest (POI), environmental, and geography — in order to take a data-driven approach to fostering their growth.
Bigger & better data
A+ approach
Enabling detailed
route-to-market strategies
RESULTS
Improved location selection and agility; can select sites for vending machines based on existing and anticipated conditions rather than guesswork
Formulated rapid response to COVID-19 lockdown measures; successfully relocated machines from no-longer-busy transport hubs to other areas (primarily residential) where lost business could be partially recouped
Predict machine performance by location, providing insights to key stakeholders in sales, marketing, and operations
Objective
APPROACH
Use/used CARTO to:
Build analytics and machine learning platform to layer atop existing systems centered on Google Cloud Big Query; results visualized using CARTO.
Leverage different types of data — such as POS and foot traffic data — to understand gaps and opportunities in network
RESULTS
Objective
APPROACH
Uses CARTO to:
Optimize site planning for smart confectionery vending machines
Enrich analysis and understanding of trends and activity within vending machine portfolio, with demographic and mobility data as linchpin
Heightened revenue-generating potential, through consistently improved accuracy of site selection and faster identification of under-performing machines requiring relocation
Forecast revenue and identify under- and over-performing machines
RESULTS
Objective
APPROACH
Uses/used CARTO to:
Grow group of 639 locations enabled for click-and-collect parcel pickup service to 5,000 locations by expanding addressable market via external drop boxes located closer to its customers.
Ability to access off-the-shelf solution instead of building from scratch
Access key datasets — such as points of interest, demographics, and human mobility — to inform decisions on where to add pickup locations
User-friendly interface, with access to platform anywhere and no GIS expertise required
Availability of key datasets in one location rather than from multiple sources and vendors
Support from team of world-class solution developers and data scientists
Objective
APPROACH
Uses CARTO to:
Precise site selection and planning
Provide franchise-friendly solutions
Conduct revenue prediction
ASDA
YUM! Brands
3/3
1/3
3/4
2/3
Chose CARTO based on:
3
2
1
1. Boston Consulting Group/Google, 2. Accenture, 3. Accenture
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Many of the largest CPG companies in the world are now starting to form global functions for insights rather than inefficiently buying different tools and datasets in different countries, which is tough to enforce when different markets and categories have such different priorities. Furthermore, different category leaders want different types of data that tell them more about their shopper missions and profiles — for example, geosocial data to find the vegans or financial spend data to identify the high net worth individuals.
Global brands, local priorities
New work from home behaviors and office interactions have completely reshaped how consumers interact with brands — in terms of location, frequency, and channel alike. CPGs need increased agility when making decisions about their points of sale, enabling them to know where to focus their sales and marketing efforts (geomarketing and territory management), and where to expand next (route-to-market modeling).
Keeping up with the consumer
Geosocial data modeled from social media data to understand intent and product preferences
Understanding consumer audiences or behaviors better than competitors is critical to growing brands. CARTO for CPG enables CPG companies to accurately and closely identify their consumer audiences by accessing rich data streams, such as demographics, income levels, spending habits, and consumer profiles, at the neighborhood level. Analysis of this data can become the basis for valuable proprietary consumer segmentation models.
Catching a closeup view of markets and consumers
Objective
APPROACH
Uses CARTO to:
Harness spatial analytics and location data to determine which and how many KFC, Pizza Hut, and/or Taco Bell stores to open, and where
Provide franchise-friendly solutions
Conduct revenue prediction
Precise site selection and planning
4/4
RESULTS
Objective
APPROACH
Uses/used CARTO to:
Foundation to grow to 5,000 click-and-collect locations over three-year period
Ability to access off-the-shelf solution instead of building from scratch
Support from team of world-class solution developers and data scientists
Availability of key datasets in one location rather than from multiple sources and vendors
User-friendly interface, with access to platform anywhere and no GIS expertise required
Chose CARTO based on:
Access key datasets — such as points of interest, demographics, and human mobility — to inform decisions on where to add pickup locations
Grow group of 639 locations enabled for click-and-collect parcel pickup service to 5,000 locations by expanding addressable market via external drop boxes located closer to its customers.
3/4
RESULTS
Objective
APPROACH
Uses CARTO to:
Predict machine performance and pinpoint strategic, revenue-generating locations for expansion
Heightened revenue-generating potential, through consistently improved accuracy of site selection and faster identification of under-performing machines requiring relocation
Forecast revenue and identify under- and over-performing machines
Enrich analysis and understanding of trends and activity within vending machine portfolio, with demographic and mobility data as linchpin
Optimize site planning for smart confectionery vending machines
2/4
Optimize network of 700,000 beverage vending machines across Japan, by assessing locations where they are positioned, gleaning understanding of their performance, and adjusting locations as needed
Build analytics and machine learning platform to layer atop existing systems centered on Google Cloud Big Query; results visualized using CARTO.
Leverage different types of data — such as POS and foot traffic data — to understand gaps and opportunities in network
Predict machine performance by location, providing insights to key stakeholders in sales, marketing, and operations
RESULTS
APPROACH
Use/used CARTO to:
Improved location selection and agility; can select sites for vending machines based on existing and anticipated conditions rather than guesswork
Formulated rapid response to COVID-19 lockdown measures; successfully relocated machines from no-longer-busy transport hubs to other areas (primarily residential) where lost business could be partially recouped
Objective
1/4
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UNLEASHING THE POWER OF SPATIAL ANALYTICS
INSIDE: Discover how brands like MARS, Yum!, and Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan harness CARTO’s CARTO FOR CPGs spatial analytics platform to better identify target audiences, guide decision-making, and open doors to new market opportunities.
From where and how they should be focusing their marketing and sales efforts, to which geographic areas and markets hold the greatest promise for future growth — and beyond — today’s CPGs continue to ask themselves myriad questions as they strive to expand their market reach and maintain or sharpen their competitive edge while adapting to rapidly changing consumer behavior. But the answers are no longer found in out-of-date datasets based on old-school data collection methods or traditional “shopper insights.” Greater value comes from leveraging spatial analytics to glean a better understanding of consumer behavior, identify hotbeds of growth, formulate effective strategies for overcoming business challenges — and more.
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Just ask Mars, which — among other achievements — bolstered its revenue-generating potential by applying location intelligence found in a spatial analysis platform to optimize site planning for its smart confectionery vending machines.