NEW EBOOK: Discover how CPG brands are uncovering hidden demand drivers and winning with deep product insights.
Learn More
Consumers often look for easy-to-understand labels, but not every brand details how or why certain ingredients are used. As Clorox’s CEO put it, modern consumers demand deeper insight into the products they buy, reflecting a broader shift toward ethical marketing. Leading with a consumer-first narrative highlights the value of transparency, strengthening trust and loyalty.
Consumers are asking tougher questions. They aren’t stopping at sugar content anymore. They’re digging into where sweeteners come from, what each added ingredient does, and whether it supports their health goals and values. At the same time, regulatory agencies and state governments are introducing new ingredient restrictions faster than many teams can track.
For Shopper Insights teams, ingredient transparency has become a critical signal. The way consumers evaluate labels is shifting fast—and understanding those shifts will decide who shapes the category and who follows it. Clear, credible ingredient-level insights aren’t just valuable to your team. They’re the foundation for how category management, marketing, and ecommerce teams position products, prioritize innovation, and fight for shelf space.
Once considered a concern for a small segment of label-readers, ingredient scrutiny is now mainstream. Health-conscious consumers are no longer satisfied with vague descriptors or hidden sweeteners. They want specifics: What kind of sweetener? What type of natural flavor? What does "functional" really mean?
At the same time, regulatory pressure is growing, and it's not slowing down. The FDA’s Red Dye No. 3 ban made made headlines, but state-level legislation is moving even faster. States like California and New York are already pushing timelines that force brands to rethink entire product lines.
Many beverage companies are scrambling to catch up. They’re reacting to new rules with outdated tools: fragmented spreadsheets, syndicated data that updates too slowly, and no clear visibility into ingredient exposure across their portfolio. Without a centralized view of ingredient-level exposure, they're making decisions with incomplete information.
For Shopper Insights teams, this creates a clear opportunity to lead by turning ingredient data into competitive advantage.
With Harmonya, insights teams can scan their full portfolio in minutes, spot at-risk ingredients, model potential regulation impacts, and prioritize reformulation based on business value. So, it’s about shaping smarter strategies for innovation, compliance, and shelf placement...before the rest of the market even sees the change coming.
Ingredient transparency isn’t just showing up on labels. It’s showing up in how shoppers evaluate brands, make choices, and build trust. Today’s consumers are scanning for signals that align with their health goals, personal values, and taste preferences.
For Shopper Insights teams, this shift creates a new mandate:
In beverages, this starts with three major differentiators:
When Shopper Insights teams surface and segment around these attributes, they create a strategic advantage. They enable clearer product positioning, tighter alignment with emerging demand, and greater control over how brands show up in search filters and on the shelf. In a competitive aisle, it’s not just about what’s inside the bottle, it’s about how clearly your data tells the story.
Ingredient clarity drives visibility at shelf. Without it, retailers move fast and default to what’s familiar: legacy brands with broad awareness. Innovation loses out. Not from lack of potential, but from lack of visibility when retailers make decisions.
When category teams can't easily identify which beverages include fast-growing attributes like ashwagandha, stevia, or functional electrolytes, those products are more likely to be overlooked in assortment decisions. This creates a blind spot, not just for consumers, but for retailers themselves. The brands that win shelf space are the ones that bring more granular product data to the conversation: quantifiable proof of why their product belongs, and how it delivers on emerging consumer demand.
In an increasingly competitive aisle, the ability to surface and share those ingredient signals is what separates products that get passed over from those that get prioritized.
Meanwhile, brands that can quantify demand for clean-label sweeteners or alcohol alternatives are winning space. Coca-Cola , for example, used Harmonya's enriched ingredient-level data to completely reimagine how they approached shelf strategy. By surfacing granular insights about ingredients, such as which SKUs featured stevia versus cane sugar or what electrolyte sources were trending, they were able to ask sharper questions about product performance and relevance.
Instead of relying on traditional segmentation or syndicated data, Coca-Cola integrated Harmonya’s enrichment files directly into their space planning environment. This gave their team a new lens into category growth, helping them align shelf placement with consumer-driven attributes and demand signals. The result was a more strategically curated shelf presence, built not just on sales data, but on real-time ingredient-level insight that resonated with what consumers were actually looking for.
Brands that lack granular ingredient data will fall behind at shelf and with consumers.
Category & Insights leaders are starting to treat ingredient data the way they treat sales data: as a strategic asset. And Harmonya makes that possible.
With Harmonya's enriched product data:
This level of clarity empowers beverage category managers to respond to health trends in real time. When emerging preferences surface around natural sweeteners or new functional benefits, Harmonya equips teams to act immediately, not months later.
It also helps identify under-leveraged differentiators across the portfolio. Maybe it’s a SKU already using monk fruit or a hydration drink quietly leading on electrolytes. These are growth levers, not just nice-to-know insights, and the brands that act on them first will win.
And when it’s time to engage with retail partners, ingredient-level clarity becomes the foundation of a stronger story. One rooted not just in positioning, but in proof: real signals from consumers, backed by enriched product data.
As consumers become more ingredient-conscious, beverage brands looking to differentiate themselves need to offer more than just a label change. Emphasizing real benefits and transparency builds credibility and fosters brand loyalty.
Ready to see how it works in practice?
With Harmonya, ingredient insights become actionable, scalable, and aligned with how consumers actually shop. That’s the difference between reacting to trends and leading them.
Harmonya continuously monitors emerging regulations, transforming complex data into actionable insights. Our platform alerts you to potential risks and uncovers opportunities for product innovation, ensuring your brand remains compliant, competitive, and consumer-focused.
Learn why Harmonya is trusted by top CPGs and retailers in a brief product demo.
