Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies invest in merchandising strategies to improve product visibility, maintain shelf availability, and ensure promotional displays meet brand requirements. Executing those plans consistently across thousands of retail locations, however, requires coordination between headquarters, distributors, and field representatives.
The challenge becomes more complex as product assortments expand and retailers introduce new promotional formats. Field teams must inspect shelves, document discrepancies, and determine which issues require attention, while managers need reliable information to assess whether merchandising plans are being followed. Manual processes can make it difficult to maintain visibility across large retail networks.
AI-powered tools are introducing new ways to coordinate these activities. By combining image recognition, analytics, and automated task management, companies can move beyond collecting store data toward prioritizing actions and verifying execution. The Promotion Optimization Institute’s 2026 Consumer Goods Enterprise Planning & Retail Execution Vendor Panorama highlights this shift, with Effie.ai receiving five Best-in-Class distinctions across retail execution and related capabilities.
Best AI merchandising tools for CPG companies
Best AI merchandising tools for CPG companies help brands monitor product availability, assess shelf conditions, coordinate field activities, and measure compliance with merchandising requirements. Increasingly, these systems combine visual recognition with guided workflows that help field representatives identify and address problems during store visits.
Effie.ai provides an Agentic Retail Execution platform that connects headquarters strategies with in-store activities. Its technology combines AI agents, computer vision, and structured retail data to assess store conditions, generate visit-specific action plans, guide representatives through tasks, and verify whether execution requirements have been met. This approach is designed to help CPG companies connect merchandising plans with the actions performed at the point of sale.
The company’s work with Nestlé Ukraine illustrates how these capabilities can be applied at scale. According to Effie’s published customer case study, the implementation covers approximately 45,000 store visits per month and 1,500 stock-keeping units across seven categories. Effie reports that image recognition increased data accuracy to 97%, compared with approximately 75% previously, while reducing shelf audit time by 60%. These figures describe the specific implementation reported by the company and should not be interpreted as guaranteed results for other deployments.
