How to grow revenue without raising prices or selling more

When pricing headroom runs out, the smartest move is to look at your portfolio. Why?

Because the right products, in the right formats, at the right price points, in the right channels can deliver meaningful revenue gains.

That’s the commercial promise of Price-Pack-Architecture, and it’s why PPA has moved from a portfolio exercise to a core growth discipline, structuring how companies unlock value beyond pricing.

In this article, Alex Perilli and Luciana Ignez, Directors at SKIM, break down what PPA really involves and where companies can be smarter.

Key takeaways:

• Growth is often already in your portfolio, the question is whether you’re structured to capture it.

• Not all white spaces are worth going after – it depends if your brand belongs there.

• Sales data shows where growth has been, only consumer research shows where it’s going.

“Small, precise moves often create the biggest return. The power is in the 1%. Small, precise shifts in mix, pack or price can materially create profit when they are grounded in real shopper behavior and channel reality. The goal isn’t transformation. It’s disciplined, marginal gains, systematically unlocked.”

– Alex Perilli, Senior Director, SKIM

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What do we know about the commercial value of getting PPA right?

Alex: It’s been shown* that well-designed PPA initiatives can unlock up to four EBIT margin points by changes to mix, pack, and portfolio shifts alone. For example, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners grew revenue per unit case by 3.8% in H1 2025 with volumes broadly flat, with gains driven by pricing and pack/mix rather than more units sold.

Small, well-targeted adjustments in pack sizes, price ladders, or channel roles can deliver meaningful commercial impact at a time when pricing alone has limited headroom.

*In Roland Berger’s 2025 analysis of Price Pack Architecture

So why has PPA become such a central topic for growth leaders right now?

Alex: A lot of categories still have growth in them. The problem is it’s harder to see without the right structure.

In today’s market, consumers are more deliberate about where they spend. They’re trading down in some categories, trading up selectively in others, switching channels, choosing different pack sizes, and buying for specific moments.

Many companies are still trying to unlock that growth through price, often with diminishing returns. PPA brings structure to where demand is actually moving. It’s a lens on where the brand has real permission to grow – and how to act on it.

Luciana: In reality, the challenge is that growth is spread across channels, occasions, and price tiers; but most organizations are set up to look at these separately – across different teams, data sources, and decision processes.

PPA connects the dots, helping teams act on opportunities that would otherwise be missed.

Can you share where you’ve seen this play out?

Alex: Big growth opportunities are often hiding in plain sight.

In one case, we could see from consumer research that shoppers in a specific channel were ready to trade up, but the brand had nothing in the right format or at the right price to meet them there. By the time the sales data would have confirmed it, the opportunity would have narrowed.

Acting early made the difference. The brand was able to capture that growth rather than chase it later.

Luciana: And the risk when that clarity is missing is that teams fill the gap with activity rather than decisions. New products, new formats, new price points, none of them anchored to a clear role in the portfolio.

Retailers have finite shelf space, and a cluttered offer gives them less reason to back you. The result is complexity that looks like progress, but doesn’t drive growth.

Are there ways to find joint winning strategies with retailers?

Alex: When you look at portfolios through a PPA lens, you often find that brands and retailers are losing in the same places for the same reasons. Not from misaligned ambition, but a misaligned understanding of where value is being created or destroyed.

With the right data, PPA helps surface those shared battlegrounds. When both sides see the same evidence, the conversation shifts from negotiation to partnering to win. That’s where growth – that neither side could unlock alone – becomes possible.

How do you find white space that’s actually worth going after?

Alex: Sales data is where we typically start. It maps the category and quickly shows where brands are over- or under-represented across tiers, channels, and occasions. That’s how you identify where the white space is.

But what that can’t tell you is whether shoppers would actually respond to a brand moving into that space, or whether the brand has a credible right to win there.  

What does it take to get there?

Luciana: The challenge isn’t a lack of data. It’s structuring the right inputs into decisions.

Sales data is backward-looking – it surfaces where growth has been, but can’t explain why certain packs or formats win, or how shoppers might respond to something that doesn’t yet exist.

Primary research, such as conjoint fill that gap. PPA works best when both are combined, and then used to drive decisions, especially the trade-offs on what to prioritize, what to scale back, and what to stop.

What makes SKIM the right partner for this kind of work?

Alex: What we bring is the ability to combine historical sales data, consumer choice research, and advanced modeling into a single, coherent picture of where the real opportunities are. That’s not just analysis. It’s decision-ready insight.

Luciana: And we don’t stop at the insight. Some of the most valuable work we do is bringing the right people from RGM, Marketing, Sales, Trade etc into the same room and giving them a shared evidence base to make decisions from. That’s what turns a portfolio strategy into something a business can actually execute.

How does PPA help clarify the roles of premium, mainstream, and value?

Alex: Each tier plays a different commercial role. Premium carries the strongest margin potential but needs a clear value story. Mainstream delivers penetration and stability. Value offers volume headroom but weaker profit. PPA brings discipline, forcing clear choices on share vs profit, with the overall balance delivering the desired shape.

Luciana: In one beauty case, a company had four brands in the same category: one in value, three in premium. Consumer choice research showed the premium brands were cannibalizing each other, while none competed effectively against the largest rival in the mainstream tier.

When we brought these insights into a cross-functional workshop with teams from across the business, the path forward became clear: adjusting portfolio roles and price positioning across tiers to reduce internal overlap and strengthen their position where it actually mattered.

And finally, what role does PPA play in shaping innovation priorities?

Luciana: The question isn’t just “can we play there?” It’s “should we, and will it truly add incremental value?” Innovation used as a short-term growth lever, without a clear consumer need or portfolio role behind it, quickly adds complexity and dilutes value.

PPA clarifies where consumer demand, brand stretch, and profit headroom come together, and whether the right move is to innovate, renovate, or stay focused on the core.