Why has NPD struggled so much during the pandemic?

Manufactures needed to prioritise producing sufficient quantities of their pre-existing established SKUs.

If core SKUs are flying off the shelves anyway, why bother investing in releasing something new?

Retailers needed shelves to stay filled – reducing complexity helps this.

Consumers didn’t want to spend time considering whether to trial the latest innovation, defaulting to traditional favourites instead.

Today, 24% fewer NPDs have been released vs two years ago - the lowest it has been for a decade.

Kantar FMCG Purchase panel, 52 w/e 13 Jun 2021 number of new SKUs released over period, indexed vs 52 w/e 2019 June