Three customer loyalty levers to drive growth in baby care

And despite a cost of living crisis, almost half of consumers reject the idea of choosing brands based on price alone. What matters most is how the brand makes consumers feel.

Many baby care brands are no stranger to leveraging emotional resonance, underpinned by authentic, consumer-centric values. Within our latest Brand Impact Index,  organic baby food company Little Spoon claimed third place for best brand, while The Honest Company and Gerber also secured top 20 positions. The presence of baby care brands in the top 20 highlights how leaders of these brands are responding to shifts in the wider world, driving lifetime value, and competitive growth. So how can other baby care brands follow suit?  The answer lies in more deeply understanding and responding to the realities of parents and caregivers, and reimagining the role brands can play in bringing joy, not just functionality, to family life.

Identifying opportunity spaces for growth

We identified a number of evidence-based opportunity spaces for baby care brands by drawing on rich insights from qualitative and quantitative research with soon-to-be and new parents across the UK and US, plus expert interviews and AI-powered horizon scanning. These opportunity spaces are designed to inspire innovation and ideation for brands across sectors – grounded in real-world needs and future-facing trends.

Overall, we found parents and caregivers are embracing a more progressive, empowered mindset. They’re seeking out brands that not only understand (and can alleviate) their challenges, but actively help restore balance, confidence, and joy to caring for babies and young children.

Using the detailed insight from our research, we explore three of the opportunity spaces offering brands the strongest catalysts for creating competitive advantage.

Redefine ‘the village’ – from connected communities to data-rich insight

Community connection, a driver of emotional loyalty and brand growth, creates an essential support network – especially crucial for those navigating parenthood. However, despite 89 percent of parents and caregivers saying it’s important to feel connected to others who can relate, 64 percent of respondents said they felt alone.

The old adage ‘It takes a village’ has never been more essential, but there’s an opportunity for brands to shape this idea further. By building meaningful, authentic, and purpose-led communities that support and reassure families, brands will demonstrate a deeper level of customer understanding and become the go-to for trusted support. This is seen in post-natal care brand, Boram Care, for example, whose ‘Boram at home’ service launched in the US in 2025, and aims to bridge a care gap and connect families with evidence-based, judgment-free support.

From a brand’s perspective, the rich data generated from creating trusted communities can uncover even more growth opportunities. Brands can use this insight to explore new business model workshops and rapid prototyping sessions that can help reach viable starting points with new products and services more quickly.

When consumer engagement teams feed insights back to design, this leads to more relevant products, services, and experiences – including thoughtful extras that bring valuable differentiation. Top-scorer Little Spoon, for example, regularly speaks to parents’ particularly about their children’s food preferences and habits.

To redefine ‘the village’, brands should:

• Explore partnerships to create omnichannel ecosystems, not just digital communities, and design for shared care to connect parents to each other, to local services, and to expert advice.
• Use enhanced social listening and segmentation to foster niche or micro communities, such as first-time dads, NICU parents, kinship families, or multilingual families, for example.
• Engage diverse communities to product test and help shape R&D through a human-centred design approach. Our work with Guide Beauty included co-creating with end users to deliver new-to-market inclusive beauty products aimed at those impacted by Parkinson’s Disease.

Thrive together – amplifying brand relevancy through whole-family products and experiences

Our research shows consumers are increasingly recognising how the holistic health of the whole family – including diet, physical activity, relationship dynamics, hormone balance, and stress levels – impacts the health of babies. Parents and caregivers’ mental wellbeing, in particular, plays a significant role. Three quarters of mothers want greater candour on the realities of postpartum life, while 52 percent admitted they felt they’d lost their identity since becoming a parent. Feeling genuinely heard and seen, as an individual, is a powerful lever of brand loyalty. To demonstrate a deeper understanding of family members’ needs, brands need to help shift the message from ‘best for baby’ to ‘best for the whole family’.

To support families to thrive together, brands should:

• Explore how AI capabilities can uncover fresh insight into how families live, connect, and care. By analysing diverse data sources, including social media, brands can surface richer perspectives that inform more relevant recommendations for new products and experiences. These insights can inspire messaging that affirms and celebrated adults who prioritise self-care and personal identify alongside family life.
• Use unfiltered storytelling to share resources that support emotional wellbeing. Authenticity and creating deeper resonance will win here.
• Design products and experiences that bring joy not just utility, such as packaging that builds play into unboxing, or augmented reality packaging to create immersive experiences the whole family can enjoy.

Safe and secure – elevating trust as the bedrock of brand authority

A growing number of food, drinks, and personal care brands are simplifying ingredients from ultra-processed to whole foods, printing ingredients on the front of packaging, and employing other tactics to make labels easier to understand.

The Honest Company, which ranked in the top 12 in our Brand Impact Index, includes a ‘No list’ as part of its Honest Standard – banning 3,500 ingredients from its products. Similarly, Little Spoon sets strict limits for 500+ toxins and contaminants in its baby food. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of parents and caregivers in our survey want more evidence-based ‘dos and don’ts’ around baby care – including food and ingredients.

Transparency has always built trust. But today there’s a bigger opportunity to become a leading, authoritative voice that removes even more smokescreens to help consumers to educate themselves.

To double-down on safety and elevate trust, brands should:

• Quantify your brand’s dependence and risk profile of using existing materials and map out your supply chain for viable alternatives, such as plant-based alternatives to conventional plastics and synthetic ingredients. AI-driven ingredient risk analysis can also be leveraged to flag potential concerns early.
• Build systems that allow ingredient traceability from source to shelf, such as QR codes linking to digital product passports.
• Explore how the semiotics of packaging, textures, and scent can signal ‘safe and gentle’ to support responsible product design.

Baby care brand shapers will lead with integrity, innovation, and joy

Today, stressed, sleep-deprived, yet savvier parents and caregivers are seeing through surface-level claims on safety and one-size-fits-all solutions. In addition, as parents and caregivers navigate a growing plethora of information, advice, and support, they’re looking for answers that build self-confidence, back-up their own intuition, and restore balance and joy.

In a saturated market such as that in baby care, where brand loyalty and competitive edge are tightly intertwined, brands must find new ways of creating deeper, more authentic connections with their consumers to cut through the noise and stay relevant. Data-rich insight and real-world innovation that immediately resonates lie at the heart of this. And by positioning brands as part of a wider support network for the whole family – with must-have products and services that lighten the load and infuse joy for every family member – brands can turn this newly earned consumer allegiance and advocacy into a powerful accelerant for growth.