Before we specifically get into CPG NPS benchmarks in market research, here is a quick 101 crash course on net promoter score (NPS).
It includes detail on what the score is, how it is calculated, examples of NPS calculations, and recommendations to add context to your CPG NPS benchmark.
What is Net Promoter Score (NPS)?
Net promoter score (NPS) in market research is one of, if not the most popular benchmarks from quantitative surveys. It is a score that ranges from -100 to +100 using a calculation from a 0 to 10 likelihood to recommend scale with 0 being the midpoint.
It is a common benchmark question for products, services, brands, and organizations to measure pulse, affinity, and loyalty.
How is NPS Calculated?
Those who rate your brand a “9” or “10” on the likelihood to recommend scale are considered promoters. Promoters are those who are raving fans and are advocates of your brand. Those who rate your brand “7” or “8” on the likelihood to recommend scale are considered passives.
This audience is not particularly happy or unhappy and can be easily swayed to a competitor. Those who rate your brand “0” to “6” are considered detractors. This audience actively criticizes the brand and may go out of their way to not recommend your product or service to others.
Need more context? Here's a quick video explaining the definition, the calculation, and the benefits of NPS.
Examples of NPS Calculations
The NPS calculation is simple. The score is the mathematical difference between the percentage (%) of promoters and percentage (%) of detractors. The passives are included in the NPS calculation. Here are a few examples of NPS calculations:
- 100% promoters, 0% detractors, +100 NPS (best case)
- 80% promoters, 15% detractors, +65 NPS
- 65% promoters, 30% detractors, +35 NPS
- 35% promoters, 32% detractors, +3 NPS
- 40% promoters, 40% detractors, 0 NPS
- 38% promoters, 45% detractors, -8 NPS
- 20% promoters, 50% detractors, -30 NPS
- 5% promoters, 80% detractors, -75 NPS
- 0% promoters, 100% detractors, -100 NPS (worst case)
Other Questions to Ask Beyond NPS in a Survey
First off, our CPG market research firm always recommends including a question about “why” immediately following the 0 to 10 likelihood to recommend question.
This open-ended question provides valuable insights and context to the scores, which can be broken down in the analysis to see what drives the promoters, passives, and detractors.
Beyond the open-ended follow-up question, your NPS survey should cover a variety of other topics and objectives to help you understand the customer experience (CX). It might include digging a layer deeper on satisfaction.
NPS may address high-level affinity but ask a more specific series of questions around the price, customer service, accessibility, shipping, packaging, etc. to understand the CX fully. It is one of many question considerations to add to your CPG NPS benchmark survey.
How to Interpret NPS?
The school of NPS teaches market researchers and marketing teams to work on finding out what makes promoters tick and sell this message to passives.
Detractors should not be ignored, but there is a long-term strategy for shifting detractors. In many cases, it takes a lot of time and resources and should be done. It just cannot be completed overnight. Passives are the opportunity audience.
How to Obtain CPG NPS Benchmarks?
If you have searched online, there is not a lot of publicly available CPG NPS benchmark data available to compare brands. It can be solved through custom market research with our team of experts.
Our CPG market research company designs a survey and manages the project end-to-end, including a sample of consumers in the U.S. to obtain feedback from.
Not only does the survey inquire about the NPS for your product, service, brand, or organization, but we also ask about ratings for your core competitors.
This list of core competitors could be as few as one or two or as many as 10 to 12. Our CPG market research company completes the NPS calculations for your brand and all competitors to see precisely how you compare using the CPG NPS benchmarks.
Here are the data points you can leverage for CPG NPS benchmarks:
- Your brand’s NPS
- Your brand’s NPS compared to essential competitor brand’s NPS
- Your brand’s NPS compared to the average NPS of all brand’s tested in the survey
- Your brand’s NPS compared to your brand’s NPS last year (if the study is conducted annually)
- Your brand’s NPS compared to top NPS scores across all industries (Amazon, JetBlue, etc.)
The steps involved in a CPG NPG benchmark study include the following:
- Proposal
- Kickoff meeting
- Workplan and timeline
- Survey drafting
- Survey review
- Survey programming
- Survey testing
- Soft-launch
- Full-launch
- Live data portal
- Data quality checks
- Close fieldwork
- Analysis
- Reporting
- Debrief
How Can You Utilize the NPS Comparisons in Marketing?
Commissioning a study to collect CPG NPS benchmarks for your brand and your competition offers a lot of return for operations, marketing, and strategy.
Here are a few examples of how NPS can be leveraged to make improvements to a brand and organization:
- Operational: identifying areas to train and improve customer service or call center experience.
- Marketing: identifying the messaging which drives promoter scores and market to passives.
- Strategy: identify the weaknesses of competitors and develop tactics to capitalize on them.
Sharing substantially high CPG NPS benchmarks can be repurposed for a ton of different channels and vehicles. It offers immediate value for your brand beyond the operational and strategic improvements.
Here are some examples of how to feature NPS in your content marketing:
- Compare cards or battle cards: graphical displays of your NPS compared to competitors.
- Website copy: featuring NPS scores of your brand and competitors to show how you are rated higher.
- Blogs: creating mini-stories about how consumers compare your brand to the competition.
- Whitepapers: offer a downloadable whitepaper with consumer insights about the industry.
- Social media snackables: share different NPS data points on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
- Webinars: use the findings from the consumer survey to share knowledge about the CPG industry.
Contact our NPS Market Research Company
Drive Research is a U.S. market research company headquartered in Syracuse, NY. We work with a variety of industries and clients coast-to-coast, including consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands.
Do you need to obtain your net promoter score (NPS) or the NPS of key competitors? Contact us to design a custom market research study with consumers to obtain all of these insights and benchmarks for your team.
Questions? Need advice? Contact us one of four ways below.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040