PepsiCo launches data practice to help food and beverage retailers grow

During the pandemic, convenience and personalisation took top priority for customers shopping online for food and beverages. 

That shift led PepsiCo to launch an in-house data practice, Pepviz, to help retailers keep up with the marketplace, the company said on Wednesday. 

Pepviz combines real-time insights, advanced analytics, data science and industry insights to help PepsiCo’s retail partners reach shoppers in a personalised, omnichannel way.

“The questions that our retail partners are trying to answer are evolving really quickly,” Kate Garner, senior vice president at PepsiCo, told Campaign US. “Let's not worry about the existing set of sweeping tools and capabilities. Let's talk about the problems we're trying to solve for today and tomorrow, and then leverage our data and solutions to answer those questions as we head into the future.”

Pepviz uses a predictive, hyperlocal model on top of PepsiCo’s proprietary customer data to help retail partners reach shoppers at the right time. PepsiCo’s customer data not only helps retail partners identify the right target audiences, but also expand their customer base and target hyper-local markets. Retail partners can also see which stores shoppers are visiting and what food and beverage products people are buying from other stores. 

“We can help [our retail partners] parse out what their consumer shopper segments look like,” Garner said. “Through that, we're able to build a broader shopper agenda to help them think about growth within our categories, which is great for the partnership.”

PepsiCo launched Pepviz at the start of the NFL season because the company saw an uptick in consumer interest around the season compared to last year. While some fans plan to return to the stands, others are excited to tune in at home. The distinction is important for retailers to understand when analysing consumer behavior, said Garner.

In the next few months, Pepviz aims to prove to its retail partners it can drive growth and be viewed as a “key strategic partner.” 

“We want to drive credibility and help retailers understand that we're starting to see a whole set of new questions and we have to leverage data and process information to understand it,” Garner said.