Consumer Products Guide For 2025: Types and Examples

Discover the essential categories of consumer products and how to leverage them in your business strategy. Updated with 2025 trends and real examples.

When you want to launch a trending product that actually sells, the process starts long before the factory line. It begins with knowing how your target buyers browse, compare, and buy consumer products. 

Businesses that track the latest consumer behavior trends understand this and spot consumer product opportunities faster. They get insight that helps price, position, and market products to the right people at the right time. 

Map each SKU to the right consumer product category and you’ll know which channels, content, and profit margins make sense. Whether it’s a routine convenience item or niche collectible, you can make smarter inventory bets and create campaigns that speak your customers’ language.

Read on to learn more about the different categories of consumer products out there, 2025 consumer product trends, and how to find success with your product positioning. 

What are consumer products?

Consumer products, sometimes called final goods, are items available for individuals or households to buy for non-commercial use. 

You can break out consumer products into four general product categories based on how customers shop for them:

• Convenience products are purchased frequently, like toothpaste or snacks.
• Shopping products are those consumers spend more time comparing, like furniture or clothes. 
• Speciality products are those customers seek out and pay premium pricing for,like luxury watches.
• Unsought goods, which consumers don’t consider until needed,like insurance. 

With global consumer packaged goods (CPG) sales projected to reach $2.25 trillion by the end of 2025, knowing this product taxonomy is important. Each product category behaves differently in the market and aligns with spending habits. 

For example, in 2023, the average US household spent about 13% of its budget on convenience goods (like groceries) and only 2.6% on discretionary shopping goods like apparel. Classifying your products accurately helps you understand buying patterns and rely less on guesswork. 

Types of consumer products

The different types of products can be considered durable goods, nondurable goods, or services:

• Consumer durable goods. Tangible items that can be used repeatedly over an extended period. Durable goods examples include furniture, kitchen appliances, and electronics.
• Consumer nondurable goods. Tangible items that are consumed quickly and have a short lifespan, like fresh produce and toilet paper.
• Service goods. Intangible offerings performed by other people, like tutoring or house cleaning, that provide benefits to customers without taking a physical form.

4 categories of consumer products

1. Convenience products
2. Shopping products
3. Specialty products
4. Unsought products

Consumer products can be further classified based on consumer behavior, tangibility, and purchase frequency. 

Here are the four different consumer product classes:

	Convenience products	Shopping products	Speciality products	Unsought products
Purchase frequency	Frequent	Infrequent	Very infrequent	Rare or situational
Decision-making time	Minimal, impulsive	Moderate, researched	Extensive, researched	Minimal until needed urgently
Pricing sensitivity	High	Moderate to high	Low	Low to moderate
Marketing approach	Mass advertising and promotions	Comparative advertising	Targeted branding	Awareness-driven
Distribution channels	Wide, easily accessible (supermarkets, convenience stores)	Selective (department stores, specialty retailers, online)	High-end boutiques	Varies

1. Convenience products

Convenience products are everyday items that make up a large percentage of retail sales. For example, spending on food made up 12.9% of US household expenditures in 2023. The average US consumer spends around $150 a year on impulse purchases, so this consumer product is won or lost on the shelf.

Consumers frequently purchase these retail items with minimal effort or comparison shopping. These products are typically inexpensive, widely available, and have short lifespans.

Examples of convenience products

• Bottled water, canned soda, ready-to-drink coffee
• Potato chips, gum, and chocolate
• Paper towels, trash bags, laundry-detergent pods
• Travel-size toothpaste, deodorant, and disposable razors
• Pain relievers, allergy tablets, bandages

Marketing strategies for convenience products

• Be everywhere. Secure end-caps and checkout lanes. Sell on third-party marketplaces, your own online store, and through social commerce. 
• Offer small discounts. BOGO deals, percent-off coupons, and promos can influence purchases and provide margin on multi-packs. 
• Invest in eye-catching product packaging. Bright colors, clear product features, and pocketable packages stop busy shoppers in-store. 
• Run product advertising at high frequency. Short, repetitive spots on TV and social media keep your brand top-of-mind for routine grocery trips. 
• Start a loyalty program. Instant rewards can lock in habitual buyers and lift repeat purchases. 

2. Shopping products

Consumers invest more time and effort when purchasing shopping products compared to convenience products. They buy these durable goods less frequently, so they often do more research before making a decision. 

Recent data shows that 96% of consumers review more than one product before a sizable purchase, and 35% compare at least four options. 

Examples of shopping products

• Mid-range to premium clothing and footwear
• Smartphones, laptops, tablets, headphones
• Sofas, dining sets, mattresses
• Refrigerators, espresso machines, robot vacuums
• Bicycles, camping equipment, treadmills
• Home-improvement tools like cordless drills, lawn mowers

Marketing strategies for shopping products

• Provide comparisons. Put side-by-side spec tables, product attributes, AR try-ons, and customer reviews on your product detail pages to help shoppers shorten research time. 
• Leverage omnichannel touchpoints. Sales leader Jeb Blount’s book Fanatical Prospecting found that the average number of touchpoints can be anywhere between three and 50. Create a consistent shopping experience across your website, email, social, marketplaces, and apps. Anything less than that leaves revenue on the table.
• Offer flexible payment options. Give your customers their pick from a variety of payment methods—one-click checkout with Shop Pay, credit or debit cards, and even “buy now, pay later” options like Shop Pay Installments. 
• Have a good return policy. Free returns and extended warranties can tip the scale when shoppers are unsure about a purchase. 
• Personalize follow-ups. Set up cart abandonment emails and retargeting ads that show what products browsers compared. Use Shopify Email to manage your campaigns with branded, high-converting templates. 

3. Specialty products

Specialty products are unique items that appeal to a niche market. Consumers are willing to pour hours into research because the product signals taste, values, and status. The luxury goods sector alone hovered around €1.5 trillion in 2024.

Take the toothpaste tablet produced by Bite, an eco-friendly personal hygiene brand. Founder Lindsay McCormick started Bite in an effort to eliminate plastic toothpaste tubes and appeal to a niche audience interested in the specialty products market. 

“I saw something that didn’t make sense to me when I started looking into toothpaste: It comes in a plastic tube, and there’s a bunch of harsh chemicals, artificial flavors, and ingredients that come in it,” McCormick says on the Shopify Masters podcast. “I could make something that’s better for the planet and better for our bodies.”

Examples of specialty products

• Luxury timepieces like the Patek Philippe Nautilus
• Limited-run streetwear collaborations (e.g., Supreme × The North Face)
• Custom-spec electric guitars from boutique luthiers
• High-performance sports cars like the Porsche 911
• Eco-friendly products like Bite’s toothpaste
• Luxury espresso machines like La Marzocco GS 3

Marketing strategies for specialty products

• Sell in high-end stores. Partner with boutique stores to reach buyers with higher disposable income. For example, Bite sells its products in Erewhon, an upscale grocery chain based in Los Angeles, California. 
• Create scarcity. Bring an air of exclusivity to your products with limited edition product drops, numbered releases, and wait-list strategies. 
• Be fun and flashy. Speciality drink company Olipop recently launched its first-ever pop-up in Los Angeles to celebrate its Orange Cream flavor. The brand invited fans to sample Olipop mocktails and offered limited-edition merch. The event was fun, nostalgic, and made for great user-generated content (UGC) on Instagram. 
• Align on values, not discounts. Credentials resonate with luxury buyers more than price cuts. 72.6% of US luxury buyers surveyed in August 2024 planned to spend the same or more on personal luxury goods over the next year.
• Offer concierge-style services. White-glove delivery, lifetime maintenance, and bespoke customization turn a one-off sale into loyal customers. 

4. Unsought products

Unsought products are items or services that consumers do not actively seek out or are unaware of until they need them. Consumers often purchase these goods in anticipation of emergencies, like life insurance policies or funeral arrangements. 

Once the need strikes, the spend can be huge. Funeral home revenues, for example, hit $13 billion in 2024 and keep climbing. 

Examples of specialty products

• Term-life or disability insurance 
• Hurricane or earthquake survival kits
• Funerals, cremations, and burial plots
• Root canals and hearing aids
• Wills, identity-theft monitoring, passport renewals 

Marketing strategies for specialty products

• Educate early with problem framing. Use calculators and risk-check quizzes to help shoppers understand their needs before an emergency hits. 
• Provide trust signals. Show third-party ratings (AM Best for insurers), certifications, and transparent pricing strategies so people feel comfortable with their purchases. 
• Create partnerships. Collaborate with mortgage lenders, maternity apps, or travel sites to pitch kits and policies.

Hybrid products

Hybrid products are a byproduct of consumer product digitalization, which merges hardware with subscription software. They blur the lines between convenience, shopping, and service-based products. 

For example, if you’re selling a smart speaker, you have to sell two promises at once: the physical product and the evolving service it offers, like updates and new content. Once you sell the device, you also need to onboard customers to the service through account creation so they can benefit from the product. 

Some commercial examples of hybrid products include:

• Peloton Bike. An at-home exercise bike with on-demand and live online classes.
• HelloFresh boxes. A subscription meal kit with app-based menus and delivery scheduling.
• Whoop 5.0. A wearable fitness band with continuous health analytics and AI coaching.

These high-growth verticals all rely on innovative products that monetize the hardware once and the software or consumables repeatedly. However, this comes with its own set of marketing challenges. Hybrid products involve both product sales and ongoing engagement or subscriptions.

Here are some hybrid product marketing strategies to try:

• Be upfront about ongoing perks. Recent surveys show that US consumers are becoming more price-conscious. Shoppers are looking for more transparency and to maximize their hard-earned dollars. Sell your hardware at break-even and recoup margin through tiered subscriptions, consumable refills, or premium feature locks. 
• Create campaigns by customer lifecycle. Treat the initial purchase like a high-consideration shopping product, then retarget owners with convenience-style messaging around ease and replenishment. 
• Personalize experiences with first-party data. When customers actively engage with your products or apps, you collect behavioral data and preferences that can shape their experience. Think: weekly workout cadences on a fitness band or weekly food picks in a delivery app. Use this information to offer micro-nudges or replenishment offers to make customers feel like you understand them. 
• Create a community. Give customers a digital space to connect and discuss ideas. When customers feel part of a community, they are more likely to stick with your brand and recommend it to others. 

Consumer product trends for 2025

Sustainability and ethical consumer products

The global market for sustainable consumer products was valued at $355 billion in 2024, and is on track to almost double by 2032. It’s clear that the trust consumers have in a product’s environmental claims is influencing everything from product design to buying decisions. 

Regulations are also changing. Stronger Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws are pushing companies to take more responsibility for their products’ impact on the environment. The European Union’s Digital Product Passport requires complete information about each product’s origin, materials, environmental impact, and disposal recommendations if retail companies want to sell in the economic zone. 

Being eco-conscious in your business practices and production is also a smart move, business-wise. PwC reports that consumers are willing to pay a 9.7% sustainability premium, even as cost-of-living and inflation concerns are top of mind. 

If you want to adopt some sustainable business practices, here are a few you can act on:

• Incorporate planet-first ingredients.
• Use low-impact or reusable packaging.
• Maintain a transparent supply chain. 

👏 Business example: Abeego was the first reusable beeswax wrap on the market. It’s a specialty product that solves one major challenge for consumers: reducing plastic wrap use. It’s also a certified B Corp brand.

Direct-to-consumer revolution

The direct-to-consumer (DTC) business model is not a new idea, but it’s still one of the most effective ecommerce strategies. It means you don’t work exclusively with traditional retailers or wholesalers to sell your products. You sell through your own website, mobile apps, or stores and events. The idea is, if you own the checkout process, you own the customer relationship—and no middlemen can exploit that. 

PwC’s Global Consumer Insights Pulse Survey found that most consumers (63%) purchase products directly from a brand’s website. EMARKETER also predicts that DTC sales will make up 14.9% of total ecommerce sales by the end of 2025. 

Fortunately, ecommerce platforms like Shopify make it easy for brands to capitalize on DTC product trends. With Shopify, you can easily sell online, fulfill orders, and manage logistics. 

For example, Venus et Fleur used Shopify to integrate its ecommerce, retail, and social commerce into a single system. This enabled it to deliver personalized customer experiences that helped improve its ecommerce average order value (AOV) by 10% to 15% year over year while also boosting customer loyalty.

Insurgent brands disrupting traditional categories

Insurgent consumer brands are the smaller, more agile companies that sneak up on the market. 

Global management consulting firm Bain defines these brands as those that:

• Generate more than $25 million of annual revenue
• Have grown more than 10 times their category’s average over the past five years
• Maintained positive growth over the past two years while remaining independent or recently acquired 

They’re like the Olivia Rodrigo of consumer goods: Insurgent brands come out of nowhere, dominate sales records overnight, and leave industry giants scrambling to make a better product.

However, they don’t always achieve that goal. Bain also reports that insurgent brands captured 39% of growth within their categories in 2024. 

Common insurgent brand categories include:

• Food
• Nonalcoholic beverages
• Alcoholic beverages
• Personal care

Canned-water disruptor Liquid Death is a great example. Since 2022, the brand has doubled its valuation, to $1.4 billion in 2024, on the back of meme-driven marketing. 

How to position your products in the right category

Properly categorizing your products is only one part of the equation. The next step is aligning your products with the right pricing and distribution strategies to reach customers who shop for them. 

Category-specific pricing strategies

Convenience products

As mentioned, these are low-margin, high-volume items. Shoppers are highly price sensitive to them and will switch quickly for a few dollars in savings. In fact, 69% of consumers say they’ll change brands for a better price.

Retailers like Walmart use what’s referred to as “everyday low price” (EDLP). They offer products at consistently low prices with few discounts, and cater to a range of tastes, like different colors, sizes, and flavors. 

Shopping products

Since shopping products swing toward mid-to-high range pricing, high-low pricing (Hi-Lo) works best. This pricing strategy is when retailers charge higher prices for products but offer frequent discounts. It’s common amongst retailers like Wayfair or Kohl’s.

Shoppers in this category are thinking in terms of quality and how much they can get for a given price. So, they are more likely to respond to deep discounts and sales events like Prime Day or Black Friday.

Specialty products

Studies show that these buyers have high disposable income and are less price sensitive. They look for quality products made of exceptional materials that reflect their uniqueness and personality. 

These products are priced at a premium by default. The perceived rarity or craftsmanship creates an inelastic demand, which means the buyer’s demand remains unaffected by price changes. 

Unsought products

Customers don’t actively shop for unpleasant products like insurance or funeral services. To sell them, you’ll want to be transparent about the price and value that shoppers will receive. 

Unsought products are priced based on risk, like the probability or severity of an event. Life insurance premiums, for example, rise if the insured shows a higher likelihood of payout because of higher age or health factors. Buyers weigh the cost against the risk of something bad happening. 

Customers pay recurring or annual payments for subscription products like antivirus programs or AAA coverage. Spreading the cost over time makes a rarely used service feel affordable and gives customers better cash flow. 

Distribution channel considerations

A good way to look at distribution channels for consumer products is to match channels with purchase efforts. The easier the decision, the wider the shelf. The harder the decision, the more you need to educate. 

• Convenience products. Buyers expect availability everywhere within minutes. That’s why US convenience stores (C-stores) see 165 million daily visits, as per NIQ’s State of Convenience. C-stores, supermarkets, and delivery apps are the best sales channels to sell these products. 
• Shopping products. Shoppers want to touch, compare, and buy wherever they want. An omnichannel approach (marketplaces, website, and brick-and-mortar stores) is the best-fit mix. In fact, research shows that digital-native FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brands that add physical retail locations see an incremental lift in sales.
• Speciality products. Limiting access to these products maintains prestige and storytelling. No third parties can determine how you sell. Exclusive channels, like a flagship store, luxury ecommerce marketplaces, or curated partners, are ideal for this category. 
• Unsought products. Education and trust matter more than shelf space here. Businesses can sell unsought products through online portals, comparison aggregators (like The Zebra for insurance), or in-person sales. 

Consumer products FAQ

What is the definition of a consumer product?

A consumer product is any good or service bought for personal, non-business use. It’s also known as a “final good” because it’s consumed, not used to make or resell something else.

What are the four types of consumer goods?

The four types of consumer goods are convenience products, shopping products, specialty products, and unsought products.

What are examples of consumer products?

Examples of consumer products include convenience products like food, beverages, and personal care products; shopping products like electronics and household appliances; specialty products, such as gourmet spice blends and designer handbags; and unsought products, including insurance policies and funeral services.

What is the consumer goods sector?

The consumer goods sector is a significant part of the global economy. It includes consumer products companies that sell final goods designed for personal consumption. To remain competitive in the consumer products industry, these businesses must manage an efficient supply chain, adhere to consumer protections, and adapt to changing consumer demand and preferences.