PepsiCo’s data platform helps target products to specific shoppers

An advanced data platform from PepsiCo is helping supermarkets and other food and beverage retailers get to know their customers better.

Called Pep Worx, the cloud-based data and analytics solution assists retailers in making more informed decisions on PepsiCo product assortments, merchandising and other point-of-sale areas by identifying valuable shoppers by location.

According to Jeff Swearingen, senior vice president of marketing at PepsiCo, the granular data allows chains to map by store which items to stock, where to place them and what kinds of promotions to offer.

The objective: Help large retailers speed in-store decision-making — from days to hours — and cultivate more personalized relationships with shoppers.

Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo — whose brands include Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Quaker, Lipton, Tropicana, Gatorade, Mountain Dew, 7Up and Aquafina, among others — uses Pep Worx in-house to zero in on valuable shoppers and then works with its retail partners to bring its brand programs and innovations to life at the store level.

For example, Pep Worx helped PepsiCo identify 24 million households from its data set of 110 million U.S. households that were the best fit for Quaker Overnight Oats, a single-serve cup of dry oats soaked overnight in milk or yogurt in the refrigerator to provide a healthy, cold breakfast cereal by the morning. The company then mapped these households against shopping venues — both brick and mortar and online — where these consumers were most likely to shop.