Consumers are keeping products longer, repairing what breaks and doing for themselves what they once paid others to do. 82% of consumers say they are using items longer before replacing them, 69% are repairing products rather than discarding them and 68% are actively reducing waste.¹ They are buying secondhand and treating store brands as equals. For a growing number of shoppers, getting more from less has become a point of pride, and they expect the brands they buy to deliver the same. Meeting that expectation reshapes the mandate of nearly every seat at the table.
Crossing Income Lines
Resourcefulness is not simply a response to tight budgets. Higher-income consumers are also adopting “make do” habits, not out of necessity but by choice. The same household may buy store-brand paper towels, repair a vacuum instead of replacing it and splurge on premium skincare in the same week. Leaders who only segment consumers by income are missing the shifts in shopping behavior that directly affect the bottom line.
Reduce, Reuse, RecycleThirty percent of consumers buy apparel secondhand, and more than 20% do the same across other categories. For packaged goods, the equivalent is refill formats, concentrates, reusable packaging and products that deliver more per use. That creates tension for a business built on replenishment, since consumers want to replenish less often. Leaders who treat this only as a volume threat will fall behind those who redesign the portfolio around value per use. |
Example SC Johnson extended the Ziploc brand into reusable storage with Ziploc Endurables, a line of silicone pouches and containers that go from freezer to oven to table. Rather than treating reuse as a threat to its disposable bags, the company positioned the line as an add-on purchase, noting that 88% of households that buy durable bags also buy other food storage products.2 |
Loyalty Must Be Re-Earned
Consumers have started considering private-label products to be of equal or greater quality than comparable branded products. Discount grocers such as Aldi and Lidl have forced incumbents to rethink pricing, product quality, assortment and cost structure. Some CPG companies are responding with value tiers or by manufacturing private label themselves. Both require leaders who can manage portfolio trade-offs without eroding the core brand.
Technology Rewrites the Funnel
Consumers now have more insight before they buy than ever. AI summaries, reviews, forums and social video answer the questions that once sent shoppers to a brand’s website. Only 1% of the sources cited by large language models come from brand-owned websites. The traditional marketing funnel is compressing, and the brand narrative is increasingly written by third parties. As AI agents begin comparing products and completing purchases, emotional attachment to a legacy brand counts for less. Chief Marketing Officers will feel this most, because the levers on which they have relied for decades no longer control the story.
The DIY OpportunityNearly half of consumers report DIYing services they previously paid for, such as basic home repairs, haircuts or beauty treatments. Every salon visit or professional cleaning replaced at home creates demand for products that make the job easier and the results credible. Winning in DIY requires tutorials, content and community as much as product, which calls for leaders who can build brand presence well beyond the shelf. |
Example L’Oréal Paris responded to the surge in at-home hair coloring with Haircolor Concierge, an on-demand service that lets customers text or video chat with trained colorists, preview shades through virtual try-on and follow step-by-step tutorials. It later introduced Colorsonic, a device that mixes and applies permanent color at the press of a button, making salon-quality results easier to achieve at home. |
Every Seat Changes
- Strategy. CEOs and Chief Strategy Officers must decide where the portfolio competes on price, where it competes on performance and where it exits.
- Commercial. Commercial leaders negotiate with retailers whose private label competes directly with their brands, shifting the focus from volume growth to value growth.
- Marketing. Chief Marketing Officers must prove value with evidence and influence a narrative they no longer own.
- Operations, supply chain and procurement. These functions are often best positioned to reduce costs without eroding product quality, and they must now also support refill and take-back models.
- Product development. Designing for durability and efficiency becomes a competitive requirement rather than a sustainability initiative.
- Finance. Chief Financial Officers must model businesses in which fewer purchases are offset by higher value per unit.
Securing the Right LeadersMost CPG leadership teams were built for an era when scale and brand equity carried the business. Many roles still reward volume over value. Companies preparing for the resourceful consumer should measure each executive mandate against the capabilities this shopper requires. Organizations must expand their searches beyond traditional CPG to leaders from hard discount retail, private label manufacturing, recommerce and direct-to-consumer brands. And they should look for a track record: executives who have taken out cost without eroding quality or rebuilt share lost to store brands. These leaders are in demand across CPG, retail and private equity. The resourceful consumer is not a downturn to wait out, and the companies that treat it as one will be recruiting from behind. |
SOURCES
1 Consumer data from McKinsey State of the Consumer, 2026
2 SC Johnson, Ziploc Endurables retail launch brief, via IGA, 2023
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