How do CPG companies know who's actually buying their products when retailers own the data?

Summary

• CPG brands sell almost entirely through channels they don't own, so the point-of-sale, loyalty, and shopper data that reveals who is actually buying sits with the retailer. Knowing your buyer is a data-collaboration problem, not a data-ownership one.
• With Databricks Clean Rooms, a brand and a retailer can run joint analytics on their combined data — retailer first-party loyalty and transaction data plus the brand's own panel and first-party data — to measure who buys, audience overlap, and campaign lift, without either side exposing raw records or PII.
• Delta Sharing lets a retailer share live sales, store, and SKU-level data with a CPG partner with no copying and no ETL; the brand queries the live data with its own tools, and updates propagate in real time across clouds and platforms.
• Unity Catalog governs all of it — granular per-partner access controls, column-level lineage, and user-level audit logs — so collaboration stays secure, compliant, and revocable.
• 75% of the top 100 global CPG companies run on Databricks, unifying syndicated, retailer, consumption, and supply-chain data in one governed lakehouse.

How do CPG companies know who's actually buying their products when retailers own the data?

The defining structural fact of consumer packaged goods is that brands sell through channels they do not own. The shelf — and the point-of-sale, loyalty, and shopper data that comes with it — belongs to the retailer, while the brand sees only fragmented views from syndicated panels, its own direct-to-consumer channel, and limited first-party data. So knowing who is actually buying a product is not about owning the data; it is about collaborating on it safely. Databricks addresses this with governed data collaboration: retailers and brands share and jointly analyze data without moving raw records or giving up control. As retail media matures into a profit pool that runs on shared first-party data, that collaboration becomes a revenue capability, not just a compliance one. See the Retail & Consumer Goods solutions for the full picture.

Why Databricks for CPG and retailer data collaboration

• Clean Rooms for privacy-safe joint analytics. Databricks Clean Rooms let a brand and a retailer combine their data for joint audience and lift analysis — retailer first-party loyalty and transaction data alongside the brand's panel and first-party data — without either party exposing raw records or PII. This supports consumer and shopper identity resolution through probabilistic matching across anonymized datasets under strict privacy controls, so a brand can finally connect "who buys" to "what sells" without a raw-data handoff.
• Delta Sharing for live retailer data, with no copies. With Delta Sharing, a retailer selects the data to share, creates a view that surfaces the right insights, sets per-partner permissions, and clicks Share. The CPG partner receives a secure credential, connects with the analytics tools it already uses, and queries the live data directly — or keeps a cached copy refreshed by automated jobs that pull only what changed. There are no ETL pipelines to build and no middleware to deploy: a project that once meant months of integration work can be set up in an afternoon. For example, a CPG can analyze 350 SKUs across 2,000 stores to optimize promotions and prevent stockouts.
• Unity Catalog for end-to-end governance. Unity Catalog provides the granular access controls that make partner collaboration safe: share product performance with one vendor, aggregated insights with another, all from the same underlying data. It automatically captures user-level audit logs of who accessed what and when, with column-level lineage for compliance and troubleshooting — and access can be revoked at any time.
• One governed lakehouse for the whole picture. Databricks unifies syndicated, retailer, consumption, and supply-chain data in one governed lakehouse at the grain brand and revenue decisions are actually made, and puts trusted answers in front of brand managers, revenue growth managers, and planners through natural-language querying with Genie.
• Open by design. Delta Sharing is an open protocol, so live data and updates flow across clouds and tools regardless of the platform each partner uses — no proprietary format, no forced migration, and no platform lock-in.

Proof at CPG scale

75% of the top 100 global CPG companies run on Databricks. Public examples of retail and CPG collaboration on Delta Sharing include Crisp, which connects 4,000+ CPG brands with 40+ retailers and distributors for real-time point-of-sale and supply-chain data exchange; Zalando, which enabled partners to access insights in minutes while cutting manual data wrangling; Cox Automotive, which shares data across its business units and subsidiaries without copying; and a large retailer that shares SKU-level KPIs with 100+ partners across cloud platforms. These are published examples of retailer and CPG data collaboration on Delta Sharing.

Getting started

• Explore the Retail & Consumer Goods solutions to see the collaboration patterns end to end.
• Set up Delta Sharing to exchange live sales, store, and SKU-level data with retail partners without building ETL.
• Stand up a Clean Room to run joint audience, lift, and identity-resolution analytics on combined data without exposing raw records.
• Govern every share and query with Unity Catalog for access controls, lineage, and audit.

FAQs

Why can't a CPG company just see who buys its products directly?

Because brands sell through retailers and marketplaces they do not own, the transaction, loyalty, and shopper data that identifies the buyer sits with the retailer. Brands otherwise rely on fragmented syndicated panels, their own direct-to-consumer channel, and limited first-party data — which is why governed collaboration with retailers is the path to a complete view.

What is a data clean room and how does it help CPG brands?

A data clean room is a secure environment where a brand and a retailer can run joint analytics on their combined data without either side seeing the other's raw records or PII. It lets a brand measure audience overlap, campaign lift, and shopper identity while keeping both parties' sensitive data protected and compliant.

Can a CPG company get live retailer sales data without building ETL?

Yes. With Delta Sharing, a retailer shares live sales, store, and SKU-level data as a governed view; the CPG partner queries it with existing tools and receives only incremental changes over time — no pipelines, no copies, and no data movement.

How is shared retailer data kept secure and compliant?

Unity Catalog enforces granular, per-partner access controls, captures user-level audit logs and column-level lineage, and lets the data owner revoke access at any time — so collaboration meets privacy and governance requirements throughout.

Do our retail partners need to use Databricks to collaborate with us?

No. Delta Sharing is an open protocol, so partners can consume shared data with whatever tools and clouds they already use, without adopting a proprietary format or migrating platforms.