2026 Mid-Year Consumer Leadership Review: Earning Growth at the Shelf

Pricing carried the industry for four years, and that run has effectively ended. Cumulative increases since 2021 pushed shelf prices past what most households can absorb, elasticity returned to categories that behaved for a decade as though they had none, and retailers began resisting further increases while giving more shelf space to their own labels, which now account for roughly a fifth of US consumer packaged goods spending.¹

The adjacent levers have also thinned. Package-size reductions draw notice and political attention. Input costs no longer justify a clean pass-through, with tariffs lifting some lines while commodities ease on others. What remains is demand itself, measured in units, household penetration and purchase frequency, and it must be earned at the shelf rather than negotiated into a price list. That shift sits behind the leadership changes of the past two quarters, and it sets the standard against which incoming operators will be judged.

Consumer Habits in Transition

That volume must be earned from a consumer who is no longer behaving predictably. The shopper who once filled a cart based on habit and stayed loyal for years has become deliberate and cost-aware, willing to trade down, and private label keeps taking a larger share of the basket. Growth was still available in the second quarter, but it came more from volume and reach than from price. For example, Coca-Cola grew unit case volume 5% and raised its full-year guidance, and PepsiCo’s growth came from international markets as North American beverage volume slipped and domestic budgets tightened.

What consumers eat is shifting as well. As of June 2026, the US obesity rate had fallen to its lowest level in years, with one in nine adults now taking a GLP-1 medication compared with one in 33 two years earlier.² A measurable decline in obesity prevalence across the industry’s largest customer base moves reformulation and portion strategy from a category question to a portfolio one. Defending a brand under these conditions calls for leaders who understand both marketing and formulation science, and who can judge where capital should be redirected as demand reorganizes around measurable health, a different discipline from the pricing skill that carried the past four years.

Operating Transformation

With no rate tailwind to lift growth, institutions turned to operating discipline. Pressure on net interest margins, deposit costs and asset-liability management, along with commercial real estate exposures, put a premium on efficiency and on meeting rising client expectations for faster, more personal service. Artificial intelligence (AI) carried much of that work, reaching past agentic transactions into fraud detection, underwriting, client service, compliance and back-office operations.

Payments modernization advanced alongside it, as instant-payment systems entered everyday corporate treasury use and banks embedded real-time capabilities directly into client systems. Wealth management drew the most executive hiring as assets and advisory teams changed hands. Demand reached across the C-suite, where chief operating officers, chief digital and information officers, heads of wealth, chief lending officers and transformation leaders overhauled legacy organizations while holding controls steady.

Leadership Profile in Transition

The second quarter brought an unusual concentration of leadership changes across the industry. Conagra, Post Holdings and BellRing Brands each named a new Chief Executive Officer in recent months. Those appointments arrived alongside a broader reshaping of portfolios, much of it directed by boards and, in several cases, by the new leaders themselves. Kraft Heinz paused its planned separation under a new CEO and redirected roughly $600 million into its core brands. Keurig Dr Pepper is moving toward a separation of its own after a large coffee acquisition, and Nestlé is narrowing to a smaller set of core categories.

The common thread is board impatience with shareholder returns that have trailed the market for years, and the profile hired reflects it. These are operators with volume and brand-rebuilding records rather than pricing records.

The Second Half

Several forces will shape the leadership profile through the rest of the year. Trade policy stays unsettled, with new duties tied to Section 301 investigations expected and earlier tariffs on metals and related goods holding packaging and manufacturing costs elevated; the price increases already taken are unlikely to be given back, and energy prices remain a live input to both cost structure and demand.

Portfolio restructuring will continue as divestitures of non-core brands accelerate, with nearly half of consumer executives doubting their current structure will hold another decade. The value-seeking consumer will define the back-to-school season, where promotional intensity and performance in the center of the store give the clearest read on commercial execution. Health regulation keeps tightening, moving reformulation onto the critical path for commercial plans and favoring companies with in-house nutrition and formulation science. AI spending is shifting from pilots toward revenue management, demand forecasting and trade-promotion optimization, where the return shows up in units and the gap between companies with usable data and those without will only widen.

The capabilities in demand follow directly. Boards are hiring commercial leaders who can grow the top line in units, operations executives fluent in sourcing shifts and cost restructuring, along with finance leaders able to stress-test scenarios against shifting trade terms. Above all they want operators who have rebuilt brands and defended both share and margin, and who can adapt as portfolios and demand keep moving.

SOURCES

⁽¹⁾ Circana, private label sales report, March 2026. | ⁽²⁾ Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, June 2026.

Select 2026 Consumer Searches

View More Successful Consumer Searches

News & Insights

• Redrawing the CPG C-Suite: The Health and Wellness Revolution
• Redrawing the CPG C-Suite: The Tech-driven Path to Purchase
• Current Demands of Luxury Retail Leaders

View More Insights