Changing Consumer Spending: Less About COVID-19, Specifically, & More About the Economy & Spending Priorities

Recent surveys indicate that consumer spending trends have become less linked to pandemic conditions and news and are increasingly linked to recessionary conditions – including unemployment, economic uncertainty, and declining consumer confidence ­– that resulted from the pandemic:

• Consumers are still staying home, prioritizing spending on their homes, products needed for use in the home, and self-service options over going out.
• They have expanded the number of products seen as “essential” and worthy of stocking up on.
• As able, they are spending on certain luxuries within consumer packaged goods – e.g., skin care, home care products, and special food items – since they are not spending on luxuries within travel, entertainment, and eating out.
• Additionally, risk-averse customers are looking for value, not just a low price, as a way to limit waste and best allocate their resources, particularly if they are still reluctant to go out for frequent shopping trips.

For more information and discussion of opportunities, see Packaged Facts’ food- and beverage-related reports, including US Food Market Outlook 2020: Home Cooking, Grocery Shopping & Food Trends in the Age of Coronavirus, US Beverage Market Outlook 2020: Grocery Shopping & Personal Consumption in the Coronavirus Era, and Food Carryout & Delivery as well as the companion report with timely consumer insights from our in-house survey capabilities. The Freedonia Group’s extensive collection of off-the-shelf research provides a strong complement to packaged food industry analysis, the including the Consumer Goods category and Global Foodservice as well as packaging industry titles such as Foodservice Single-Use Products and Global Foodservice Single-Use Products. Freedonia Custom Research is also available for questions requiring tailored market intelligence.