INTELLIGENCE INTELLIGENCE COMPETITIVE

With the increasing demand for consumer goods, the competition among CPG companies has reached its zenith, making it essential for these companies to gain insights into their competitors’ strategies to stay ahead in the market. In the context of CPG companies, image recognition technology allows them to analyze images of products and their packaging to gather data about their competitors’ offerings.

CPG companies can use image recognition technology to collect data on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to:

Product features: Companies can use image recognition to identify and analyze the features of their competitors' products. This can include packaging, size, color, shape, and other attributes that can help companies understand the strengths and weaknesses of their competitors' offerings.

Pricing: Image recognition technology can be used to monitor the prices of competing products across different channels, such as online marketplaces, physical stores, and advertisements.

Promotions: CPG companies can use image recognition technology to track the promotions and offers being run by their competitors, including discount codes, coupons, and other incentives.

By using image recognition technology to gather data on their competitors, CPG companies can make more informed decisions about their own product offerings and marketing strategies. For example, if a company learns that a competitor is offering a new product with a unique packaging design, it may decide to update their own packaging to stay competitive. Moreover, by automating the process of data collection, CPG companies can save costs on manual data collection methods such as in-store audits or market research studies. Image recognition technology can gather data from a large number of images and videos quickly and accurately, reducing the time and cost associated with traditional data collection methods.

Trivia:

Placement: Image recognition can help companies track the placement of their competitors' products in stores, including where they are located on shelves and in which aisles.

Unilever used competitor data analysis to identify market trends and consumer preferences for its haircare products. By analyzing competitor data, Unilever identified a trend towards natural ingredients in haircare products and launched its Love Beauty and Planet line, which features natural ingredients. According to the company, the line generated €100 million in sales in its first year of launch.

(Source: Unilever Annual Report 2018)