Consumer Platforms 

Put consumers at the center of your growth strategy and expand the addressable market by moving from a traditional category-based view of your offering to a focus on “consumer platforms.” We define consumer platforms as groups of categories that address a unique consumer need. We help you conduct the deep consumer research that identifies these needs, so you can prioritize key platform priorities and align your people behind select high-impact objectives. 

Our unique approach consists of:

• Consumer Research: Through a mix of in-person consumer ethnographic research and just-in-time remote dialogues with consumers at the time of consumption, we uncover their raw needs and identify possible opportunities to meet them.
• Radar 360 Strategy^®: We use a comprehensive “today-forward/future-back” framework that analyzes the digital trends and emerging innovations that will shape your industry five, ten, and even twenty years from now.
• Expertise: Our proprietary BAN (Bain Advisory Networks) and Venture Ecosystem networks help identify future disruptions, both in consumer needs and the way the industry serves customers, to make your strategy future-proof. 

Consumer Demand Spaces

Determine where to play and improve your competitive advantage by tailoring your brand portfolio strategy around consumer demand spaces, the unique combinations of why consumers consume (what is the raw need they seek to satisfy?) and the context they consume in.

Through in-the-moment consumer data collection and AI-infused advanced analytics we’ll help you define and size consumer demand spaces, so you can better understand fundamental consumption occasions/needs and shopper behaviors, expand your products/services to serve more and bigger consumer needs, and prioritize your innovation and renovation investments based on the biggest opportunities. 

We do this through a combination of:

• Consumer intimacy: Through a mix of in-person consumer ethnographic research, just-in-time remote dialogues with consumers at the time of consumption, and our proprietary Demand Spaces survey we uncover why consumers consume and the context they consume in.
• Shopper partitions: We overlay consumer behavior with a detailed shopper-focused view to identify whitespaces and future adjacencies.
• Advanced Analytics: Our deeply experienced Advanced Analytics team will help you harness multiple data sources to generate valuable insights. We apply the latest analytics techniques and tools to help you generate insights from a range of complex data sources. 

Bain Brand Accelerator

Nurture and grow your brands with an actionable, multi-year brand growth plan focused on the consumer. Bain Brand Accelerator^® is a battle-tested approach that spans four key attributes, centered on your brand purpose and ESG pillars.

Our FRWD^® marketing and ecommerce experts provide deep insights on best practices, and our Bain Capability Network delivers core consumer products analytics and insights.

Marketing & Consumer Experience

Determine how to maximize your brand growth ambition by analyzing and accelerating specific value creation levers that will propel growth.

Focus on Marketing Effectiveness and Efficiency and consumer and customer strategy to put consumers at the center of the most strategic decisions regarding offerings and channels, consumer experience design, cost management and innovation.

Consumer-centric Technology & Data Enablers

Drive repeatable growth by building a broad set of technological & data enablers that support your consumer-centric ambition. We help you grow and embed data collection capabilities that span unique access to first-party and zero-party data, and leverage the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence, so you can generate insights, spot trends, and optimize innovation and the consumer experience. Redefine your decision-making playbook and transform your organization with enhanced ways of working and an operating model that facilitates dynamic, agile, cross-functional teaming.

Our unique approach consists of:

• Consumer tech & data strategy: Develop a fit-for-purpose marketing tech stack to activate most relevant consumer use cases in line with your marketing strategy
• Commercial excellence tech & data strategy: Leverage data and technology to optimize channel and route-to-market strategy, to boost revenue growth, create win-win business plans with customers, and drive perfect store execution in line with your commercial strategy
• Change management program: Integrate new tech and data in day-to-day decision-making and embed of new ways of working across the full organization