State of Consumer Products Report

Reclaiming Relevance: sales and marketing in the age of AI

| This year’s State of Consumer Products Report looks at how brands win the battle for consumer choice when AI and algorithms drive decisions.

Reclaiming Relevance: sales and marketing in an AI world

As platforms, algorithms and AI agents increasingly shape demand—often before consumers ever browse or compare—the challenge for Consumer Products leaders is no longer generating insight. It’s ensuring commercial decisions connect and carry through across pricing, promotion, media and supply.

Executive summary
Rob Holston | EY Global and EY Americas Consumer Products Sector Leader

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Last year, we urged consumer products companies to reassert relevance with consumers, retail customers and capital markets. Today, that challenge remains, but the context has changed. AI, retailer platforms and algorithms influence purchases before the consumer starts to shop. These are radical changes. Still, companies are anchored into operating models designed for a different era. We believe organizations need to rethink commercial decisions across the business. We published two reports, one on sales and marketing and one on supply chain. Together, they outline a journey to an integrated model connecting demand and supply. Through insights from top industry leaders and exhaustive research, we've diagnosed the industry's greatest challenges. We've identified a key strategic error that we call the Optimization Trap and recognize a growing Decision Gap quietly eroding margin and relevance. Demand is increasingly taking shape upstream from traditional sales and marketing models that are under strain. In response, companies have optimized individual levers like pricing, promotion and media. But because these decisions are made in silos, they ultimately only increase the gap between insights and action. The companies that connect decisions across sales, marketing and supply ensure their brands are consistently chosen in an AI-shaped marketplace. Despite challenges, there are significant opportunities for reclaiming relevance. In a market guided by intelligent platforms and decision engines, advantage will come not from having more tools, but for how well those decisions are connected. I hope you read the report, and I look forward to hearing from you.

How brands win the battle for consumer choice when AI and algorithms drive decisions

Demand is increasingly shaped before consumers start shopping, with retailer platforms, algorithms and AI agents setting the purchase agenda. Signals move faster, interact in more complex ways and influence purchase outcomes earlier. In this Consumer Products (CP) environment, individual decisions about pricing, promotion and media are less important than how decisions connect across the business.

This year's CP report explores why many CP leaders are stuck in an Optimization Trap of chasing efficiencies without addressing structural issues in disconnected operating models.

Concurrently, we show how a Decision Gap is emerging that separates insight from action throughout the enterprise and quietly erodes growth, margin and relevance.
Download the report

Sales and marketing remains the growth engine of Consumer Products

Sales and marketing remain the growth engine of Consumer Products. But even after significant investments in AI, data and analytics in sales and marketing, the engine is leaking value. Adding AI to functions in isolated use cases creates efficiency for the function, not growth for the enterprise. Years into the AI age, it’s clear that unless companies apply AI capabilities across the commercial model it has limited impact on business outcomes.

Our research shows that many CP companies are improving individual decisions without addressing operating model disconnections and widening the Decision Gap.

Transformation is happening, but value creation is lagging

This chart highlights that transformation is underway, but value creation remains limited across consumer products functions:

Overall: Limited improvement accounts for 54% to 60% across all areas, including speed and effectiveness of commercial decisions at 60%, impact of brand and product at the point of purchase at 59% and predictability of revenue and margin delivery at 54%, while moderate improvement ranges from 27% to 34% and significant improvement remains low at 9% to 15%
Marketing: Limited improvement is most pronounced, reaching 68% for both impact at the point of purchase and speed and effectiveness of commercial decisions, followed by influence on digital shelf at 65% and simplicity of portfolio execution at 60%, with moderate improvement between 24% and 33% and significant improvement generally below 12%
Sales: Outcomes are slightly more balanced but still dominated by limited improvement, ranging from 55% to 64% across measures such as commercial decision speed at 64% and strength of retailer and platform relationships at 58%, while moderate improvement sits between 26% and 32% and significant improvement between 8% and 13%, reinforcing a consistent message that transformation efforts across overall operations, marketing and sales have yet to translate into sustained and widespread business value.

What sales and marketing mean for today's enterprise

As demand moves upstream, value is getting lost where decisions fail to connect — between pricing, promotion, media, portfolio and supply. The companies that redesign how decisions are made, governed and carried through end to end will have an advantage.

CP leaders agree that developing product signals geared to AI agents is a key sales and marketing priority, but few believed that their organizations were capable of influencing algorithmic recommendations.

Long-term value creation pivots on ability to influence agents and algorithms

This chart illustrates how long-term value creation increasingly depends on the ability to influence agents and algorithms, based on the share of respondents who believe each capability will be a competitive advantage versus merely required to compete:

Overall: Future differentiators cluster around influence over AI agents and algorithms at roughly 45% seeing this as a competitive advantage with about 33% saying it is required, and external data platform integration at around 42% versus 30%, while trusted product signals and efficient commercial decisions sit closer to the strategic growth driver quadrant at approximately 37% to 40% competitive advantage; assumed capabilities include brand storytelling at about 22% competitive advantage and simplified portfolios at roughly 30%.
Sales: Near‑term priorities are most pronounced, with AI‑driven commercial optimization standing out at around 53% seeing it as a competitive advantage and about 50% required, and efficient commercial decisions at roughly 40% competitive advantage, while influence over AI agents and algorithms at close to 47% and external data platform integration at about 43% are positioned as future differentiators; brand storytelling remains an assumed capability at under 20%.
Marketing: influence over AI agents and algorithms again emerges as a leading future differentiator at approximately 46% competitive advantage, followed by external data platform integration at around 43% and trusted product signals near 39%, while efficient commercial decisions and AI‑driven commercial optimization move into near‑term priorities at roughly 41% and just over 50% competitive advantage respectively; across all three views, the pattern shows a clear shift away from traditional assumed capabilities toward advanced, data‑ and AI‑led capabilities as the primary drivers of future competitive advantage.

In the full report

The full EY Reclaiming Relevance: Sales and Marketing in an AI world goes deeper into the forces driving change in sales and marketing functions and explores what leadership teams can do now.
Download the report

Executive interviews and secondary analysis within 24 markets across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and survey results from more than 850 senior Consumer Products executives

More than 20 interviews with Consumer Products C-suite executives and industry analysts who provided deep insights into emerging challenges, decision-making dynamics and leading practices

Learn how to ignite relevance through sales and marketing in an AI world

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