Food: To win back consumers, food giants need to make better products
- InsightTrendsWorld
- Apr 22
- 9 min read
Why Is This Topic Trending?
Consumer dissatisfaction with product downgrades: Many legacy CPG products have suffered noticeable quality declines due to years of reformulations and shrinkflation—consumers are calling this out.
Rise of empowered, vocal consumer movements: Communities like “crunchy moms” are pushing brands and regulators to focus on natural ingredients and cleaner labels, bringing real change to policies and public discourse.
Digital transparency transforming expectations: With online reviews, ingredient databases, and social media visibility, poor-quality products are quickly exposed and lose consumer trust.
Collapse of mid-tier brands: Consumers are increasingly polarized—opting either for premium offerings that justify their price or for low-cost private label alternatives. Brands in the middle are losing relevance.
Regulatory shifts and cultural awakening: The FDA’s ban of Red Dye No. 3 reflects growing political and cultural pressure for healthier, more transparent food products—led by consumers, not corporations.
Overview
Legacy CPG companies are at a crossroads. Cost-cutting strategies that once boosted margins are now backfiring, as consumers reject mediocre product quality and demand better experiences. While inflation and tariffs have sparked pricing conversations, what’s truly at stake is consumer trust. To compete in a new landscape of transparency, activism, and choice, brands must elevate product quality to the center of their business strategy—or risk irrelevance.
Detailed Findings
Quality drives loyalty and revenue: Over 70% of consumers state that quality is the number one reason they stick with a brand, surpassing price, branding, and convenience.
Digital reviews dictate sales outcomes: A single-star increase in online product ratings can boost sales by up to 26%, proving that quality perception is tightly linked to commercial success.
Consumer spending is polarizing: Bain’s 2025 report shows that consumers are either trading up for premium quality or trading down to affordable private labels—leaving less room for legacy mid-tier brands.
Shelf placement losing power: With brand loyalty declining and store-switching on the rise, physical shelf space is no longer a guarantee of purchase or prominence.
Grassroots influence is reshaping regulation: Parent-led and health-oriented movements are increasingly shaping food safety debates and pressuring brands to reformulate with cleaner ingredients.
Key Takeaway
In today’s marketplace, product quality is no longer optional—it is the foundation of consumer trust, competitive advantage, and long-term growth.
Main Trend: "The Quality Reformation"
Legacy brands are undergoing a reckoning as consumers, empowered by digital tools and cultural movements, demand better products. This trend reflects a deep shift from marketing-led strategies to product-first value creation, where true quality—not just perceived quality—defines brand relevance.
Consumer Motivation
Consumers want to feel good about what they buy—from taste and texture to ingredient integrity and ethical sourcing.
They seek transparency and authenticity from the brands they support.
Many are driven by a sense of self-care and family protection, especially parents and health-conscious shoppers who scrutinize labels.
There's growing emotional dissatisfaction with legacy brands that no longer reflect consumers' standards or values.
What Is Driving the Trend?
Widespread reformulations and shrinkflation have led to perceptible declines in taste, value, and overall experience.
Increased health awareness is shifting consumer attention toward what goes into their food—and how it affects their body and lifestyle.
Power of digital tools and peer reviews has created a culture of accountability—poor-quality products are swiftly and publicly criticized.
Cultural movements and social influencers have made food quality a mainstream topic, not just a niche health concern.
Motivation Beyond the Trend
A desire for empowerment through informed decision-making—people want control over what they consume and how it impacts their health and wellbeing.
Social identity signaling—choosing clean, high-quality, or artisanal products is a way to express personal values and status.
The emotional reassurance of feeding yourself or your family something trustworthy and wholesome.
Description of Consumers
Age: Primarily Millennials and Gen Z, with strong participation from Gen X parents.
Gender: Female-skewed in activism and purchasing leadership, but growing gender-neutral as quality becomes mainstream.
Income: Mid to upper income for premium brands; low to middle income favoring store brands and value.
Lifestyle: Health-conscious, digitally literate, environmentally aware, community-driven, often skeptical of mass-market legacy brands.
Conclusions
The era of brand dominance built on marketing and distribution power is over. Consumers now wield influence through social channels, review platforms, and grassroots organizing. CPGs must radically shift their priorities—from chasing cost efficiencies to delivering superior, transparent product experiences that meet today’s higher standards.
Implications for Brands
Stop the race to the bottom: Continual cost-cutting has eroded trust. Brands need to reinvest in what actually reaches the consumer—product quality.
Elevate R&D and sensory testing: Winning products in 2025 will be those rigorously tested for taste, feel, freshness, and consumer delight.
Develop reformulation roadmaps: Brands must identify SKUs suffering from past degradations and relaunch them with improved formulas and messaging.
Shift from marketing-driven to product-driven branding: Future brand equity will be built on product truth, not just storytelling or nostalgia.
Implications for Society
Healthier, more transparent food systems could become the norm, driven by collective consumer action.
Regulation will likely become more responsive to public pressure, with faster crackdowns on harmful additives or misleading labels.
Food quality becomes a social justice issue—affordability and access to high-quality food may become central political topics.
Implications for Consumers
More choice and visibility into what they buy: With clean-label databases, ingredient trackers, and honest online reviews, shoppers can tailor choices to their specific values and needs.
Greater power to influence brands via digital platforms and movements: Platforms like Reddit, TikTok, and Amazon reviews allow even small voices to impact major companies.
Higher expectations and reduced tolerance for mediocrity: Consumers are no longer passive—they demand continuous improvement and back up their demands with spending decisions.
New role as “quality activists”: Consumers are becoming the watchdogs and advocates of product integrity, often more effective than regulators.
Implication for Future
The brands that win in the future will be those that center their entire business models around product quality—from formulation and testing to storytelling and community trust. Half-measures will not suffice; quality must become a brand’s lived identity.
Consumer Trend: “Ingredient-First Loyalty”
Consumers are increasingly making purchasing decisions based on what’s in a product, where it comes from, and how it performs—not just how it’s marketed. Loyalty is earned through transparency, clean ingredients, and consistency, not advertising.
Consumer Sub Trend: “Review-Driven Retail”
Digital platforms now dictate product success through crowdsourced validation. Ratings, unboxing videos, and social commentary act as real-time feedback loops that reward great products and punish poor ones, regardless of brand heritage.
Big Social Trend: “Food as Activism”
People are using their food choices as political and ethical statements. Whether protesting additives, advocating for food justice, or pushing regulatory change, food has become a battleground for cultural values.
Worldwide Social Trend: “Clean Culture”
A global movement toward additive-free, ethically produced, and environmentally sound food is underway. From the EU to the U.S. to Southeast Asia, transparency and trust are becoming universal consumer expectations.
Social Drive: “Digital Empowerment”
Consumers are leveraging technology—reviews, social media, and data access—to reshape brand behavior. The power dynamic has shifted from brand authority to consumer voice.
Learnings for Brands to Use in 2025
Conduct quality audits across SKUs to identify which products are failing consumer expectations.
Make product improvement central to brand strategy, not a behind-the-scenes cost center.
Leverage sensory testing and consumer panels to understand and respond to evolving preferences.
Develop messaging that reflects actual product enhancements, not just superficial rebrands.
Engage proactively with critics and reformulation advocates to build trust and long-term reputation.
Strategy Recommendations for Brands to Follow in 2025
Prioritize “hero SKUs” for reformulation and relaunch—these can become ambassadors for quality renaissance.
Create transparency portals on packaging and online—highlight ingredient sourcing, testing methods, and quality upgrades.
Partner with trusted third-party certifiers or influencers to validate improvements and signal credibility.
Rebuild loyalty through sampling and sensory-driven campaigns, not just price cuts or ads.
Make quality a KPI in brand dashboards—link internal performance to consumer experience outcomes.
Final Sentence
In the age of radical transparency, brands no longer control the narrative—consumers do. The only way forward is to make products that earn trust with every bite, sip, or use.
What Brands & Companies Should Do in 2025 to Benefit from the Trend and How to Do It
Listen deeply to consumer dissatisfaction via social listening, reviews, and forums.
Elevate internal quality teams to the same strategic level as marketing and finance.
Invest in product reinvention, not just cost restructuring—quality is the most defensible form of value.
Use transparency as a brand asset—openly communicate changes, ingredient upgrades, and quality commitments.
Build a community around product trust—engage consumers in testing, co-creation, and advocacy.
Final Note:
Core Trend: The Quality Reformation – A consumer-led transformation demanding that brands prioritize excellence over efficiency.
Core Strategy: Fix First, Then Market – Before rebranding or promoting, ensure your product experience lives up to your promise.
Core Industry Trend: Experience Over Efficiency – Long-term success comes from delightful, reliable, and trust-driven consumer interactions.
Core Consumer Motivation: Feel-Good Consumption – People want to feel healthy, smart, and ethical in their purchases—and they expect brands to support that feeling.
Core Trend Detailed: The Quality Reformation
Description
The Quality Reformation is a transformational shift in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, led by empowered consumers who are no longer tolerating subpar products masked by marketing. After years of cost-cutting, reformulations, and shrinkflation, shoppers are demanding that brands return to product excellence—placing quality, integrity, and transparency above pricing games and legacy prestige. It marks a rebirth of consumer trust built not through storytelling, but through substance. In this new era, product quality becomes the foundation of competitive advantage, not a secondary consideration behind pricing or promotion.
Key Characteristics of the Trend (Summary)
Consumer-first focus: Prioritizing taste, ingredients, texture, and real performance.
Rejection of mediocrity: Consumers are actively walking away from brands that degraded quality to cut costs.
Review-driven economy: Online reviews and word-of-mouth now determine product longevity.
Transparency and authenticity: Clean labels, traceability, and reformulation disclosures are essential to rebuild trust.
Polarized brand landscape: Mid-tier brands are vanishing, with spending concentrating in premium or private label ends of the spectrum.
Market and Cultural Signals Supporting the Trend (Summary)
Ratings and review culture: A 1-star increase on platforms like Amazon can boost sales by 26%.
Ingredient bans and new regulations: The FDA’s ban of Red Dye No. 3 highlights the power of grassroots influence.
Activist consumer segments: Groups like “crunchy moms” have driven food quality into political and cultural relevance.
Brand-switching behavior: Even historically loyal consumers are switching to brands that offer better quality, regardless of marketing.
Success of challenger brands: New players with fewer SKUs and higher-quality formulas are outperforming established CPG giants.
How the Trend Is Changing Consumer Behavior (Summary)
More informed purchasing: Shoppers now rely heavily on ingredient lists, product reviews, and peer recommendations before buying.
Demand for clean and premium: Consumers are trading up for premium or trading down to private label—abandoning brands that offer neither.
Less tolerance for brand equity alone: Legacy name recognition is no longer enough; the product must perform and justify its price.
Rise of food activism: Consumers are becoming advocates, not just shoppers—using platforms and petitions to demand higher quality.
Expectation of accountability: Consumers expect brands to acknowledge past missteps and be transparent about quality improvements.
Implications Across the Ecosystem
For Brands and CPGs
Must re-center product quality as the core driver of innovation, communication, and brand value.
Required to reformulate poor-performing SKUs or risk obsolescence.
Should move from legacy complacency to quality-driven agility—taking cues from successful smaller brands.
For Retailers
Shelf placement is no longer a sales guarantee—retailers must stock based on review performance, quality metrics, and local trust.
Opportunities emerge to expand high-margin private label lines that emphasize quality and clean ingredients.
Retailers must align with consumer watchdog culture by vetting and verifying brand claims.
For Consumers
Consumers gain greater control over what enters the market, driven by activism, reviews, and purchasing power.
Expect a higher standard of transparency and ingredient integrity from all brands, not just premium players.
Develop stronger emotional and identity-based bonds with brands that genuinely align with their values.
Strategic Forecast
By 2026, product quality will overtake price as the top purchase driver in most CPG categories.
Digital-first CPG challengers will continue to steal market share by combining high product quality with compelling brand storytelling.
Reformulations will accelerate, not for cost reduction, but to restore sensory appeal, ingredient purity, and performance.
Legacy brands that fail to rebuild trust through product upgrades and transparency will experience long-term erosion in relevance.
Retailers will invest more in quality vetting, using AI and consumer review mining to stock what performs best—not just what markets best.
Final Thought
The Quality Reformation is not a trend—it is a reckoning. Consumers have declared that brand promises are no longer enough. In a world where every bite is reviewed, photographed, and compared, only the best products will survive. The brands that thrive in 2025 and beyond will be those that recognize quality not as an aspiration, but as the baseline.
Comments