MEET OUR INDUSTRY GUEST
In this edition of "Conversations with Market Mosaic", we sit down with Riccardo Tomè, Senior marketer, Pepsi and Lay's, PepsiCo, who has 6+ years of experience in FMCG and Healthcare, driving growth for iconic brands across Italy and Spain.
Riccardo shares his insights on the theme of Consumer Intelligence & Premium Brand Strategy.
Enjoy the full interview below!
Market Mosaic: Consumer behaviour moves faster than most research cycles. What's the earliest signal, not a formal data source, something you actually observe, that tells you a market is shifting before the numbers catch up?
Riccardo Tomè: The earliest signal I watch is when promotional mechanics stop working the way they used to. Not a sales collapse but a loss of decisiveness at the shelf. The shopper is in the aisle, picks up the product, and puts it back. That hesitation, which you notice before any tracker moves, usually means the value equation in their mind has quietly shifted.
You confirm it by talking to trade partners or sitting in qualitative sessions, but by then you're already a quarter behind. The signal was always there.
Market Mosaic: Private label isn't just a price play anymore, it's a genuine brand threat in some categories. What does a premium brand actually need to do differently today to stay worth paying more for? Not the marketing answer. The product and intelligence answer.
Riccardo Tomè: Private label has closed the quality gap in most categories, so the answer has to start with the product. First, consistent superiority; if a consumer does a blind test and can't tell the difference, the premium is already lost. That means ongoing investment in product quality, not just at launch but across the entire lifecycle.
Second, innovation that comes from real consumer needs, not trend-chasing. The kind that solves something genuine and is structurally hard to copy: a specific texture, a sourcing decision, a format that fits a real consumption occasion.
Third, and this is where brands sometimes pull back when they shouldn't, continued investment in brand building. Salience matters. A consumer who has your brand front of mind at the moment of purchase is far less likely to trade down.
Market Mosaic: Standard research tools don't reach everywhere. What have you had to build, borrow, or completely rethink to get reliable consumer intelligence from markets that traditional data providers underserve?
Riccardo Tomè: A couple of things are key to really understanding what consumers think and how they behave. The first is spending time with consumers, real qualitative immersion, not just sitting behind a mirror watching a focus group, but being in the conversation. People reveal things in dialogue that a survey never captures: the hesitation, the contradiction between what they say they do and what they actually do.
The second is being physically present in the store. Standing in the aisle, watching how shoppers navigate the shelf, where their eyes go, what they pick up and put back.
No planogram analysis replicates that. You also see things that never make it into a report: a competitor's product running out of stock, a facings decision that's quietly killing your visibility, a shopper ignoring a promotion that looked great on paper.
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