Arm & Hammer Grew on Less Promotion. Lavazza Grew on More Price.

Two CPG numbers from Q1 that don't usually appear in the same paragraph.

Arm & Hammer Laundry took record market share by reducing promotional support. Volume up 5.3 percent with less trade spend than the prior year.

Inside the same eight-day window, Lavazza K-cups grew more than fifty percent inside a Keurig Dr Pepper coffee segment that printed pod shipments down 7 percent. Same shelf, same cost curve, same tariff schedule.

One brand won on being the cheaper option. The other won on being the premium one. The middle of the shelf, the mid-tier branded 24-pack (neither cheap enough for the first consumer nor differentiated enough for the second), is where the contraction is hiding.

Church & Dwight CEO Rick Dierker on the call:

“Arm & Hammer laundry detergent is about half the price of the leading detergent with great efficacy and great value. This is a great position to be in when consumers are pressed at the gas tank and want to make sure their dollar goes further.”

That’s not a brand-equity story, it’s a positioning story - The consumer is trading down. Arm & Hammer is already at the price the trade-down consumer is reaching for. Promotional support wasn’t required to win the consumer because the consumer was already heading toward the value tier. Arm & Hammer was the brand that fit that budget without forcing a leap to private label.

The two consumers share an aisle but don’t compete for the same shelf. Dierker named the brand that proves it: the “leading detergent” he priced Arm & Hammer against is Tide, the premium winner in the laundry aisle this quarter. Procter & Gamble grew companywide volume for the first time in a year on the strength of Beauty up seven percent organic and Tide carrying North America Fabric Care into the Tide EVO launch. Same aisle, value brand and premium brand both growing. The mid-tier detergent (the one that isn’t half the price and isn’t the brand the trade-up that a consumer pays a premium for) is where the category volume is leaking.

Lavazza is the inverse as well - The consumer reaching for a $14.99 four-pack of single-origin Italian espresso in the K-cup aisle is not the same consumer who’s recalibrating a grocery list at the gas pump. That consumer is reaching for the premium signal the brand carries. When the price moves to $16.49, that consumer pays the difference because they weren’t buying on price in the first place. Fifty percent unit growth says the consumer is buying more of it, not less.

The shape repeats once you look for it. Hershey absorbed the cocoa cost shock that compressed Mondelēz’s adjusted operating income by 19 percent because Hershey’s growth came from the premium-snacking end of its mix (i.e. Reese’s, Dot’s Pretzels, protein bars, etc.) while Mondelēz’s mid-tier chocolate didn’t have a similar lever to pull. Keurig Dr Pepper’s M&A response to its own coffee footprint is a portfolio reallocation toward the premium end of the format by acquiring Peet's Coffee, expanding the Starbucks K-cup agreement and launching Keurig Alta with Keurig and Peet’s first. Different categories but the same answer.

Now lay 2026’s retailer-side capability convergence over the top of that with Walmart announcing 10,000 SKUs of Great Value redesign; The value tier of private label is getting upgraded with the design polish that earned national brands their shelf premium for two decades. In parallel, they also unified Vizio’s TV login with Walmart accounts (allowing them to start attributing streaming exposure to in-store purchase), while Kroger went live with Google DV360 (becoming the first retailer with full SKU-level closed-loop measurement). The infrastructure that brands used to outspend retailers on (design, first-party data, closed-loop measurement, etc.) is being installed retailer-side in a single quarter.

That convergence isn’t symmetric. It makes the value tier more attractive to the trade-down consumer than it’s ever been: Great Value at half the price with the design polish of a national brand is a meaningfully better alternative to the mid-tier 24-pack than it was a year ago. The premium tier is largely unaffected - Lavazza’s consumer isn’t going to be swayed by the redesigned Great Value boxes. The brands caught between the two, neither cheap enough to compete with the upgraded value tier nor differentiated enough to hold the trade-up consumer, are the brands losing on both fronts.

The diagnostic question that lands for any CPG operator isn’t do my brands have equity? It’s where in the consumer’s wallet is each of my brands sitting? At the value end where Arm & Hammer is winning by being cheaper? At the premium end where Lavazza is winning by being the brand? Or in the middle of the wallet, where the volume is bleeding because neither end of the consumer base is reaching for it.

Arm & Hammer doesn’t need to rely on brand equity to win, it needs price. Lavazza doesn’t need to rely on price to win, it needs the consumer to keep paying for the brand. Both work in 2026, but the mid-tier laundry sleeve and the generic licensed K-cup do not.

In the end, the consumer is doing the sorting. The decision the brand in the middle has to make isn’t which strategy to run, it’s whether to spend on moving the brand to where the consumer is, or risk spending to defend a position the consumer has already left.