FaST (Few Sentence Takeaway): And it's over. The pivot from PoV (price over volume)—the strategy where companies defended profit with price while volume drifted lower—to the Battle for Volume has begun. Pepsi was the poster child for the price over volume trend. Now, it has announced its lowering prices going forward. Not that it was ‘taking less price.' It was cutting it. After years of price hikes and margin protection, Pepsi is rapidly moving toward affordability and frequency—pivoting from price to volume.

Yes, Dara. So, as I mentioned, it is very surgical. This is well-tested at scale. Obviously, we're executing, it means that we got very good ROI from those investments. Volume return is pretty good, and that's what the category needs, units and volume to go up. This not only has a good impact in the consumer, obviously, being part of our business and being part of our brand, but as you can imagine, once we've right-sized Frito-Lay, as we have, the flow-through of additional volume has a lot of good leverage for us. So, you should think about all these components, and we'll update you more as we get more data in coming quarters. We're very optimistic, and we started the year in a good place.

— Pepsi earnings call, February 3, 2026

So…What Happens After PoV?

Quite a bit.

Pepsi is not alone. There are already several "Pepsi-like" moves happening across consumer-facing companies—explicitly choosing traffic, volume, and market share over price:

• Target: cutting prices on approximately 5,000 frequently shopped items (food, beverages, household essentials).
• McDonald's: rolling out a national "McValue" platform.
• General Mills: explicitly saying consumer-value investments improved volume/share and that the goal is restoring volume-driven organic sales growth.
• Kraft Heinz: allocating an additional approximately $300 million in U.S. promotions to navigate a softer consumer and drive performance.
• Kellanova: returning to a "more traditional" balance between price, mix, and volume as price discovery stabilizes.

The Battle for Volume starts with "affordability" as the battle cry.

PoV was simple math: Take price, lose some volume, and (usually) expand margin dollars.

The Battle for Volume has different math: Give back (some) price, (try to) regain volume, and (hoping) operating leverage keeps EPS intact.

Okay, Andrea. Let's step back for a minute. We expect Frito-Lay to grow volume, net revenue, and operating margin this year. So, that should be the framework that we operate in. Now, this growth will come early in the year, okay? So, we expect volume growth and net revenue growth to come early in the year. The way you should think about the pricing investments and the article obviously talks about the maximum, as I said earlier, it will be very surgical investment, in particular, consumers, brands, channels, where we see that the biggest friction for higher frequency is price. And that's the way we've tested and the way we'll go.

Now, you should think about a combination of some price investments, not all of it is, obviously, net revenue from PepsiCo, and a large space gains. Just to give you a number, the average space gain for Frito-Lay in the new resets of both the main aisle and the perimeter will be double-digit. So, we'll be growing double-digit space in Frito-Lay from the March, April timeframe, when most of our partners start changing their layout. So, this is a good return for us and a great return for the category as well, and this category needs to grow. It's very relevant for our partners, it's relevant for us.

— Pepsi earnings call, 2/3/26

During PoV, the consumer understood prices were going up. Supply chain disruptions and energy spikes were dominating news cycles. That was the perfect justification for price increases.

Now energy prices are lower, and supply chains have healed. Consumers are not willing to accept the "but tariffs" excuse.

In the Battle for Volume, multiples will favor companies that can:

• Grow volume and share while lowering price
• Keep margins stable via productivity
• Prove that volume gains are sustainable

Price over volume was a beautiful thing—may it rest in peace—a rational strategy in a supply-constrained, stimulus-fueled world. It became a favored strategy because it worked.

In the coming Battle for Volume, the question is whether it will...work. No one is going to complain about lower pricing. But the notion that competing for incremental volumes is as easy as changing a price tag is ludicrous. Price is very cheap margin. Volume is a more expensive margin. Maybe it will all work out due to AI productivity gains and better supply chain management.

Welcome to the Battle for Volume.