About the Study

In order to develop the “Rethinking the Value Chain: New Realities in Collaborative Business” report and associated business model for action, The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), working with Capgemini, brought together 55 participants and experts from leading industry players, including consumer products manufacturers, retailers, service providers, technology companies, NGOs and other industry organisations, including a governmental body.

The group came together, in March 2015, for a collaborative visioning workshop in London  to ask the following key questions:

• What has fundamentally changed since companies first came together to form collaborative industry bodies in the nineties?
• How will changing demographics, increased urbanisation, digitisation and new shopping landscapes change our value chains?
• How will this evolution progress in developing economies – and can business leapfrog current infrastructure constraints in the early stages of market development?
• What will be the role and impact of consumers, individually and collectively, as they increasingly drive the value chain?
• How will we address security and trust as information proliferates in a world that is increasingly transparent and ubiquitously connected?

A smaller group in Paris, in April, held follow-up sessions on the output from the intensive London workshop which was further supported by additional analysis, expert interviews and teleconferences. Resulting from this, the group put forward three strategic thrusts. These address consumer engagement, transparency and the last mile of distribution.

The resulting report is a call to action for all of us playing leadership roles in the consumer industry. It argues that the disruptive forces at work in the industry are now so great that they require us to adopt new forms of collaboration. These disruptive forces are familiar to all of us. They include: changes in the way that we as consumers make our buying decisions; the growth of the urban middle class; and the success of new business models, often pioneered by “internet-native” companies. The report argues that our traditional business models, traditional definitions of the value chain and traditional forms of collaboration are not up to the challenges that these forces present.

We invite you to help us ensure that future value networks strengthen our industry and benefit consumers through the challenges that lie ahead.