PepsiCo market intelligence: diagnosing brand blind spots to reverse market share loss

Project: Market Share Recovery & Strategic Distribution Analysis

Organization: PepsiCo (Long-term client through Nielsen and Markits Consulting)

Role: Lead Market Intelligence Consultant. Embedded within the client team to provide high-level strategic diagnosis, retail audit analysis, and field-based insights.

Region: Beirut, Lebanon

Period: 2011 

Project Focus 

Identifying the root cause of a sustained three-month decline in market share that internal departments were unable to diagnose.

What we aimed to solve       

To break through internal departmental silos and look beyond standard sales reports to explain a shift in consumer behavior that was eroding the brand’s core demographic.

The Context   

While sales and marketing departments focused on defending internal metrics, the brand was losing ground to a quiet but aggressive wave of non-alcoholic beer alternatives.

The Strategy  

A "Deep-Dive Diagnostic" strategy that merged quantitative retail audit data with qualitative field observation. We moved from looking at how the product was sold to why the consumer was picking up a competitor.

The Process

The intervention involved a six-week investigative roadmap:

• Data audit: rigorous review of retail audit data, including shelf-share, weighted distribution, and merchandising execution.
• Anomaly detection: identified suspicious "shelf take-off" patterns that indicated a shift in consumer pick-up despite stable distribution.
• Field intelligence: stepped out of the spreadsheets and into the field to conduct direct observations and consumer conversations.
• Trend synthesis: connected the dots between the brand’s "childish" perception and the rising trend of sleek, beer-like non-alcoholic alternatives among young adults.

Photo by Jo Kassis

Evidence of Impact

• Strategic breakthrough: successfully diagnosed a "blind spot" in consumer behavior that had been missed by standard internal tracking.
• Reframed positioning: provided the evidence needed to pivot the brand’s focus from distribution execution to re-engaging a young adult demographic.
• Cross-departmental alignment: Ended the internal "blame game" by surfacing a market-wide trend that required a unified strategic response.
• Long-term trust: the success of this diagnosis led to continued commissions for monthly distribution and availability projects.

Extension

I first began working with the PepsiCo team in 2007 while at Nielsen. This collaboration continued all the way through 2018 under Markits Consulting, resulting in a series of subsequent commissioned projects after I partnered with the firm.