What Consumers Are Really Hungry For: How CPG Brands Can Design for Desire

Consumers are watching their budgets, scrutinizing value and asking more from the products they choose. At the same time, they are still making room for indulgence. They are just evaluating what makes it worth it.

Across comfort foods, specialty beverages, sweets and snacks, the products people reach for are often the ones that change how they feel, even just for a moment.

A little more playful. More satisfying. More in control. More alive.

That is the bigger story behind what is referred to as treatonomics: how consumers are redefining value through small luxuries.

Treatonomics is a lens for understanding why certain products, formats and occasions keep earning space in people’s lives, even when consumers are making deliberate trade-offs elsewhere.

The idea builds on a long-running consumer behavior often described as the lipstick effect, a concept used to explain why people seek out affordable rewards during times of economic uncertainty. When larger indulgences feel harder to justify, smaller ones can become more meaningful.

Today’s version has its own nuance. Consumers are not simply looking for an affordable reward. They are looking for small pleasures that feel specific, intentional and worth choosing.

The value paradox is everywhere

Consumers may trade down in one category and splurge in another. They may pull back on full-service dining but still make room for a sweet drink, snack run or small treat. Selectivity does not erase their desire. It makes that desire more precise.

The same person choosing store-brand cereal during the week may still buy the limited-edition candy, the premium coffee, the spicy snack or the pre-workout beverage that feels right for the moment.

That is why the strongest small luxuries do not ignore economic reality. They acknowledge it and still make the treat feel permissible. Sweethearts’ recent “Love in This Economy” conversation hearts worked because they put the tension directly on the product: indulgence and constraint in the same bite.

For food and beverage leaders, value is no longer just about being affordable. It is about earning the choice.

That value can come from a craveable flavor, a ritual consumers have built, a format that gives permission or a sensory experience that feels unlike anything else in their day.

What matters now is understanding why one product earns a place in the basket while another sits on the shelf.

Needs explain survival. Desires explain why products are chosen.

Most food and beverage brands can point to a need they solve. Hunger. Thirst. Energy. Convenience. Freshness. But needs only tell part of the story.

Needs explain when people have to act. Desires explain when people want to.

Many food and beverage choices happen after the basic need has already been met. Someone may not be hungry and still want something crunchy. They may not need a beverage and still want a ritual. They may not need candy and still choose a little treat because the moment calls for it.

This is where brand strategy has to move beyond category convention. A brand cannot only know what it sells. It has to understand the role it plays.

Maybe the product offers a moment of escape. Maybe it creates a quick hit of delight, gives consumers a sense of control, makes indulgence feel more intentional or turns sensation into something shared

Those answers shape how a brand shows up, how a product is framed, how packaging design communicates value and how retailers understand where the product belongs.

The next growth lever may be a new occasion

One of the most useful ideas around treatonomics is this: the opportunity is not always a new product. It can be a new occasion.

That does not make product innovation irrelevant. It means many brands already have products that could work harder if they were connected to a clearer moment of desire.

A snack might already belong to a cozy night in. A beverage might already be part of an afternoon reset. A candy might already be functioning as a self-gift. A salty snack might already be tied to shared sensory connection through heat, crunch, spice or challenge.

When brands understand the breadth of occasion consumers are emotionally tapped into, they can make the product easier to choose.

Under the treatonomics lens, we’ve identified five occasions connected to core human desires:

Immersive Escapism is the product that belongs to a reading session, binge-watch, cozy gaming night or slower evening in. These occasions are planned, ritualized and sensory-rich. The product becomes part of the setup and the fulfillment of the experience.

Whimsy Injection is the little treat that interrupts an ordinary moment with delight. It shows up in unexpected textures, playful formats and products that make people smile before they even try them.

Choice Therapy is the comfort of choosing what feels right. It shows up in better-for-you snacks, functional sweets and GLP-1-friendly gum or mints that help consumers meet a need or enjoy the act of chewing when hunger is not the driver.

Permissible Hedonism is indulgence chosen consciously and without apology. It is the adult pleasure, the earned reward and the product that feels intentionally worth it even when consumers are watching their budgets.

Shared Sensory Connection is the communal moment built around a sensation. A crunch, snap, burn, tingle, fizz or sour hit becomes something people react to together.

These occasions help brands move from broad category language to sharper brand positioning. A product designed only for “snacking” can feel generic. A product connected to a specific desire has a clearer reason to exist.

Specificity makes a product feel intentional

In a more selective spending environment, vague products have a harder job. If a consumer cannot quickly understand the experience, the moment or the reason to choose, price and promotion start doing too much of the work.

Specificity changes that.

It can show up as texture, flavor, ritual, cultural reference, portion size or a clear role in the day.

In food and beverage, specificity is often sensory. The sour hit. The chocolate snap. The slow burn of spice. The audible crunch.

When so much of daily life happens through screens, devices and algorithms, those cues become memorable because they are immediate. There is no mediation between the person and the sensation.

That is why packaging design has such an important role to play. The pack often has to do the first round of translation, helping consumers understand what kind of moment they are buying into before they taste, sip or share.

A sour product should make the intensity clear. An elevated self-treat should signal permission. A whimsical product should create pause at shelf. An accessible format should reduce the friction of commitment.

The goal is not to over-explain. The goal is to make the desire easier to recognize.

Desire should shape where and how products show up

Understanding the emotional role of a product is only part of the work. Brands also need to show up where that motivation is already forming.

In-store, that can mean merchandising the moment, not only the aisle. A display organized around the Friday movie night, the solo reading hour, or the midday pick-me-up can speak more directly to the desire driving purchase than a display organized only by category. Treat occasions do not always happen neatly inside category boundaries. They show up at checkout, in seasonal displays, near entertaining moments, in baskets and in cross-category pairings that help the consumer build a fuller experience.

Online, it means meeting the ritual before the purchase decision. A consumer planning a cozy reading night may not be searching for snacks. They may be inside BookTok, cozy gaming content or self-treat conversations. The desire forms before the transaction.

That is where brand positioning becomes practical. The brand has to know the moment it belongs to before it can show up there with confidence.

It also matters for retail storytelling. The clearer the desire story, the easier it becomes to explain why a product belongs in a certain display, occasion or basket. The shelf that serves the moment has a better chance of winning the choice.

Key takeaways for CPG brands

The most useful signals are not always the newest. Often, they are the ones that reveal what consumers keep reaching for in new forms.

Pleasure. Control. Delight. Ritual. Sensation. Self-reward. Shared experience.

For food, beverage and confectionary brands, the opportunity strategic opening is to look at existing products through those desires and make the connection easier to see.

That could mean clarifying the occasion a product already serves, refreshing the pack so the sensory promise is more immediate, building a retail story around a moment instead of a category or helping buyers understand why a product can keep earning its place beyond short-term velocity.

The questions become more focused:

• What role is this product already playing in people’s lives?
• What moment does it naturally belong to?
• Is the brand positioned at the center of that moment or only near it?
• Does the packaging design make the experience easier to understand?
• Could retail or digital activation meet the consumer closer to when the desire forms?
• Does this product feel earned, easy to justify or easy to give oneself permission to choose?

Treatonomics is useful because it does not require brands to chase novelty for novelty’s sake. It asks them to pay closer attention to what consumers already value and make that value easier to choose.

In constrained times, people do not stop wanting joy. They become more deliberate about finding it.

That is the real opportunity right now: not just to sell a product, but to understand the feeling a consumer is reaching for, and to be the brand that delivers it.