Bigeye's Retail Disrupted study of 1,501 US shoppers found that 89% say being able to see, touch or try a product adds value to shopping in a store. A CPG marketing strategy for 2027 has to win that moment at the shelf and the search that happens before it, because almost every shopper now does both. Bigeye, the Orlando agency for consumer brands, builds these plans for food, beverage, beauty, pet and household brands through its CPG marketing practice.

This playbook lays out eight steps, in the order Bigeye works them, with the numbers behind each one.

Key takeaways

• Bigeye found that 44% of US shoppers prefer to shop in stores across categories and 21% prefer online. For food and drink, the in-store preference is stronger still.

• Bigeye found that 9 in 10 people who follow influencers bought a product in the prior six months after seeing an influencer use, review or recommend it.

• Store brands hit a record $282.8 billion in US sales in 2025 and grew nearly three times as fast as national brands, according to PLMA.

• Retail media will take $69.33 billion from US advertisers in 2026. Walmart and Amazon collect most of the growth.

• 113 small "insurgent" brands captured about 36% of US consumer products growth in 2025 with less than 2% of the market. Size is not the advantage it was.

What is a CPG marketing strategy?

A CPG marketing strategy is the plan for how a consumer packaged goods brand earns preference, gets found, and gets bought again, across stores, retailer sites and its own channels. It sets who the buyer is, why the brand deserves a price above the store brand, where the money goes, and how the team will know what worked.

Most plans fail on the second part. They pick channels before they've decided what the shopper should believe. The eight steps below fix the order.

The numbers to plan around

Step 1: Start with the shopper, not the channel

Decide who buys, what job the product does for them, and what they'd switch from. Do that with research, before any media plan exists. Brands that skip it end up describing themselves in the category's language, which is the store brand's language too.

The National Mango Board is the clearest case in Bigeye's work. Mango sales in the US had stalled. Bigeye ran audience research in English and Spanish, rebuilt the identity and website around what shoppers said they didn't know (how to pick one, how to cut one), and ran an integrated digital campaign. Website visits rose 23%, and the case study reports video advertising up 726%, paid social up 275% and display up 647%.

Research no longer has to take a quarter. Bigeye's EyeQ studies return in 72 hours with samples from 200 to more than 5,000, which is fast enough to test a claim before it goes on a pack.

Step 2: Decide why you beat the store brand

Pick one reason a shopper should pay more, and prove it. Store brands grew 3.3% in 2025 against 1.2% for national brands, and their unit share reached a record 23.5%, according to PLMA and Circana. Parity products lose that fight on price every time.

Circana expects 2026 food and beverage growth to come from price and mix, with volume flat or slightly negative. So the room to grow by raising prices is closing. Deloitte's 2026 consumer products outlook counts 47% of consumers globally as value seekers, including 35% of high-income households, and 65% of the CPG executives it surveyed expect more private label competition.

A brand has three honest answers: it works better and can show it, it stands for something the shopper cares about and can show that, or it's the one people ask for by name. Choose. Then make every pack, page and ad carry the proof.

Step 3: Plan the shelf and the screen as one path

Shoppers don't pick a channel. They use all of them on the way to one purchase. NielsenIQ reports that nearly 94% of grocery shoppers bought both online and in stores in 2025, and that online accounted for close to 75% of grocery dollar growth.

The store still closes the sale. Bigeye's Retail Disrupted study (1,501 US shoppers aged 18 to 55, fielded August 2021) found 44% prefer shopping in stores against 21% online, and 89% said a product's visual appeal matters to which brand they choose. Packaging is media. Treat it that way.

What happens before the store has changed more. Bigeye's Recruit and Retain briefing cites ICSC and McKinsey data showing 85% of shoppers research online before visiting a store, and an Impact.com finding that 93% of shoppers who use the same retailer online and in store would trust it less if the two didn't match. Your product page, your pack and your shelf tag have to tell the same story with the same claims.

Step 4: Treat retail media as the cost of the shelf, then earn beyond it

Budget retail media as what it has become: part of the price of distribution. US advertisers will spend $69.33 billion on it in 2026, up from $58.79 billion in 2025, and eMarketer expects Walmart and Amazon to take more than 89% of the new dollars.

That concentration is the planning insight. Spread thin across twenty networks and you buy reporting, not growth. Put the money where your volume is, defend your branded terms, and hold the rest for work the retailer can't do for you: making people want the brand before they open the app.

Bigeye manages retail media across Walmart Connect, Chewy, Target Roundel, Kroger Precision Marketing and Instacart, and plans it alongside brand media for that reason. Two guides go deeper: retail media ROI and where brands get it wrong and the 12 Walmart ad metrics that guide spend.

Step 5: Make the claim believable

Say less and back it up. Bigeye's Believability Gap briefing reports a Razorfish and Vice Media Group finding that 83% of marketers think their brand lives its stated purpose. Only 43% of consumers agree.

The same briefing cites Edelman's 2026 Trust Barometer: 41% of people name unpaid voices (friends, family, people like them) as the biggest influence on whether they trust a brand. Twenty percent name what the brand says about itself. Half as many.

So the work is evidence. Ingredient sourcing a shopper can check. A clinical result with the study named. A founder who shows up. Florida Crystals grew from a regional organic sugar into a national brand on that kind of substance, including its regenerative farming story; Bigeye's case study reports triple-digit growth.

Step 6: Use creators as distribution, not decoration

Brief creators to sell, and measure them like a channel. Bigeye's Retail Disrupted study found that 9 in 10 influencer followers had bought a product in the prior six months after seeing an influencer use, review or recommend it, and 38% said they trust influencers more than their friends for product recommendations.

Here's the catch: in the same study, 40% said their trust in influencers had fallen. Reach without fit burns money. Small creators with real category credibility, product in hand, and a link to the retailer the shopper already uses will beat a famous face reading a script.

Social commerce is now a shelf of its own in some categories. NielsenIQ reports TikTok Shop health and beauty sales grew 84% year over year, making it the number four US ecommerce retailer in that category.

Step 7: Get recommended by AI assistants

Write product and brand content that an AI assistant can quote, and get other sites to say it too. Adobe data cited in Bigeye's Recruit and Retain briefing shows AI-referred traffic to US retail sites rose 62% year over year in July 2026 and converted 60% more often than other traffic. McKinsey's August 2026 consumer survey found 46% of US consumers would definitely or probably use AI tools for holiday shopping.

Why does that matter for a CPG brand? Because "what's the best protein bar without sugar alcohols" used to be ten blue links. Now it's one answer with three brands in it.

The brands that get named have plain, specific claims on their own pages, the same facts repeated on retailer listings, and mentions in reviews, roundups and forums. Bigeye's AI SEO and GEO work starts with what assistants say about a brand today. This guide on why a page ranks on Google and never gets cited by AI explains the gap.

Step 8: Measure what moved, not what was nearby

Judge every channel on sales it caused. Retailer dashboards credit the ad for purchases that would have happened anyway, which is why branded search always looks like the best investment in the plan.

Use three layers. Sales lift tests at the retailer for retail media. Holdout regions or matched markets for brand media. A simple marketing mix model once there are two years of data. Bigeye's marketing analytics team builds all three, and this explainer covers marketing mix modeling in plain terms.

Channel roles at a glance

Bigeye's read

Bigeye's view is that most mid-market CPG brands are over-invested in retail media and under-invested in being wanted. The retailer's ad platform is very good at collecting a sale from someone who already chose you. It does almost nothing to make the next shopper choose you, and it reports both the same way.

Bain's 2026 insurgent brands analysis makes the point from the other side. The 113 brands it tracked captured about 36% of category growth with under 2% of the market, and grew volume roughly 55% while overall volume was flat. Zesty Paws, where Bigeye built the brand architecture, followed the same path to a $610 million acquisition by H&H Group, as the case study describes. The brands taking share built preference first and paid the shelf toll second.

One more force belongs in every 2027 food and beverage plan. Circana reports that 23% of US households now use GLP-1 medications and projects those households will account for 35% of food and beverage units by 2030. A brand that hasn't asked what its product means to that shopper is planning for a market that's already leaving.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between CPG marketing and other marketing?

CPG marketing sells low-cost, frequently bought products through retailers the brand doesn't control. That means the shelf, the retailer's site and the retailer's ad network sit between the brand and the buyer. Strategy has to win preference before the store and conversion inside it.

How much should a CPG brand spend on retail media?

There's no single right share. Bigeye plans retail media as a cost of distribution and sets it by retailer, in proportion to where the brand's volume is. With Walmart and Amazon taking more than 89% of new retail media dollars in 2026 (eMarketer), most brands do better concentrating than spreading.

How can a smaller CPG brand compete with private label?

By giving shoppers a reason that survives a price comparison. Store brands grew 3.3% in 2025 against 1.2% for national brands (PLMA and Circana). Bain found 113 insurgent brands still took about 36% of category growth, mostly on distinct benefits and strong preference.

Do shoppers still prefer buying CPG products in stores?

Yes. Bigeye's Retail Disrupted study of 1,501 US shoppers found 44% prefer stores across categories and 21% prefer online. NielsenIQ reports nearly 94% of grocery shoppers bought both ways in 2025, so the plan has to cover both.

What does Bigeye do for CPG brands?

Bigeye is a full-service agency for consumer brands, based in Orlando and founded in 2002. Its CPG work covers consumer research, brand strategy, packaging and creative, paid and retail media, AI search visibility and analytics, for challenger and established brands in food, beverage, beauty, pet and household.

Talk to a CPG strategist

If your 2027 plan needs a second set of eyes, Bigeye's CPG marketing team will walk through it with you. Start the conversation.

Sources: Bigeye, Retail Disrupted (2021); Bigeye, The Believability Gap (2026); Bigeye, Recruit and Retain (2026); PLMA and Circana (Jan 2026); eMarketer (Nov 2025); Circana (Nov and Dec 2025); NielsenIQ (Mar and Apr 2026); Bain & Company (Mar 2026); Deloitte (Jan 2026); McKinsey (Aug 2026).