Ecommerce Leaders: PepsiCo Shares Strategies for Leading Transformation and Growth

Consumers remain largely optimistic about the economy but still plan to spend less across many discretionary categories, according to McKinsey & Company.

This creates a challenge for brands: With more competition, how do they attract interest and convert engagement into sales? 

The 2025 Digital Shelf Summit (DSS), hosted by the Digital Shelf Institute (DSI) and Salsify, brought together ecommerce leaders and digital transformers for an in-depth discussion of current (and future) market conditions.

In their recent session, “Leading Through Growth: Driving Impact, Innovation, and Future Ready Strategies at PepsiCo,” Jeriad Zoghby, chief commerce strategy officer for IPG, and Parth Raval, chief strategy and transformation officer for PepsiCo North America, offered a look at challenges, opportunities, and strategies for ecommerce success.

Emerging Challenges for Ecommerce Brands

Zoghby offers a sobering take on the current ecommerce landscape.

“Challenges for ecommerce leaders have dramatically increased across speed, scale, and complexity,” he says. “It’s truly unprecedented.”

Speed is the first concern. Brands now need the ability to check inventory levels in real-time and forecast both immediate and potential demand. With so many other companies operating in the same space, sudden shortages or inventory overstocking can tank the bottom line.

When it comes to scale, meanwhile, Zoghby notes that “as a consumer, it’s never been better, but that doesn’t mean I’m buying more.”

The McKinsey data backs this up — while buyers are cautiously optimistic, they’re also aware that prices are trending up. They’re not spending more simply because more options are available.

On the contrary, they’re taking more time to consider product availability, cost, and quality. Companies also must account for the rise of “ambient shopping,” which occurs when customers purchase while engaged in another activity, such as scrolling social media or watching TV.

Complexity is also on the rise. Zoghby put it simply: “The number and cost of channels you’re using has increased.”

This is the reality of omnichannel operations: Brands must meet customers where they are, not where they’d like them to be.

3 Strategies for Success in the Evolving Ecommerce Landscape

As noted by Raval, PepsiCo has undergone significant changes over the past few years.

“At the end of the pandemic, we realized we needed a lateral organization to accelerate decision-making,” he says.

The move was a success — Entrepreneur now calls PepsiCo a “high-yield dividend king” and says they offer “value too good to ignore.”
But what made this shift possible? Raval offers three insights for success.

1. Start With Strategies Instead of Solutions

“Oftentimes we have a solution in search of a problem,” Raval says.

But this approach creates its own challenge. With money spent on solutions, they can’t sit on the shelf. The result is a focus on fitting applications and services into workflows, rather than identifying problems that need to be solved.

Raval recommends a strategy-focused approach that identifies current and upcoming challenges. From there, brands can find targeted solutions that address specific issues. 

For example, if brands struggle to keep product detail pages (PDPs) updated, it’s worth evaluating product experience management (PXM) solutions that can streamline the process.

2. Create Common Vernacular

Raval also notes that an effective digital transformation strategy is a team effort. To help facilitate this all-in approach, he suggests creating a common vernacular.

“Use shared [key-performance indicators] (KPIs) that are interdependent and move away from the notion of swim lanes,” he says. “This is more like special teams — you want the best players on the field for the situation.”

3. Encourage Process Ownership

Without process ownership, teams are less likely to fully adopt new tools and technologies.

“If you build the most perfect system, it's the worst thing you can do,” Zoghby says. “If it’s perfect, it’s rigid. And if it’s rigid, people can’t make changes, and they don’t see it as theirs.”

Raval says that at PepsiCo, it’s made clear that “you have an obligation to dissent.” He doesn’t want teams to simply accept new directions or ideas — instead, he encourages them to push back and see how ideas can be improved.

He also suggests that instead of simply providing new tools to front-line staff and saying “I hope you like them,” it’s critical to encourage co-development that takes into account user needs and preferences.

Addressing the AI Impact

No discussion of ecommerce is complete without mentioning generative AI (GenAI). Consider the rise of generative engine optimization (GEO), which sees brands creating content easily picked up and summarized by GenAI-powered search engines. This requires a shift in SEO strategy, focusing on immediate customer value rather than simple keyword rankings.

Raval’s approach to AI is simple.

“It needs to be tied to a view to value,” he says. “If a generative AI solution — or any AI solution — isn’t solving or redesigning a workflow, activity, or an entire process in our business, I’m not interested.”

This ties back to the strategy versus solution approach. While AI tools are powerful and impactful, they’re only valuable when tied to specific outcomes.

The Heat Is On

Zoghby offers a sobering take on the state of ecommerce: “The industry’s house is on fire.”

While true, this doesn’t mean brands have to simply stand back and watch it burn. 

“We used to plan very deterministically,” Raval says. “But that’s out the window now. It just won’t work. Now, you have to be very iterative. You have to realize that nothing is deterministic. It’s all probabilistic.”

Raval’s advice for ecommerce leaders? “What you need is a few ‘true norths’ where customers are the center.”