🧠 5 Insightful Minutes Inside the Mind of Today’s Shopper | A&M Survey Reveals Surprising Retail Trends!

Foreigning us now for five insightful minutes to discuss his company's latest current consumer sentiment survey is the A and M consumer and retail groups.

David Schneideman.

Dave, let's start with this.

What does consumer sentiment look like going into the summer months?

You know, first, thanks for having me as always, Chris and Anne.

So you know, with the macroeconomic uncertainties, you know that is having a huge effect on consumers.

You know, first was Covid, then supply chain issues, then the war, no inflations, and now last tariffs.

So consumers are planning on spending less and they're planning on saving more.

During the financial uncertainties, they're not super worried, but they're being, I would say a little bit more vigilant.

In fact, about 10% of all consumers are expected to spend less where about 30% of consumers are planning on saving more.

Now however, most of the coding is coming from discretionary spending.

So particularly think like restaurants going out prepared food along with luxury goods, jewelries and accessories.

So F and B that it is it is still around flat.

We'll talk more about that shortly.

But consumers are just being mindful of of the unknown right now.

So Dave, what kind of trade offs are consumers willing to make then in search of a better value?

Yeah so, so I mentioned that overall about it's it's kind of there's not much change with FMB from a macro aspect.

Okay.

But particularly about 25% of consumers still do plan on cutting back within food and be so think groceries.

And with that there's a couple of different ways.

About 50% of consumers are planning on switching to cheaper brands.

So cheaper brands is one option.

The second is buying fewer groceries, which is around 25% of consumers planning on doing that.

And then the last is just switching to cheaper stores.

So going to be more mindful of mass big box stores or discounters.

And that's about the other 25%.

Additionally within that consumers are more willing to try other brands.

Right now, in fact, about 30% of consumers will try almost, almost 10 new brands.

And the leading factor of that is price.

So price is having a huge impact on on trial but you know, still wanting to be healthy, desiring to try new products and then just recommendations from from friends, families and influencers are still having impact on consumer penetration.

Dave, what does all that mean for the private label side of the business?

Yeah.

So consumers are increasingly embracing private label.

Almost 75% of our reports is that people are purchasing private label somewhat often or often.

And over 50% of consumers believe private label has improved over last year.

So private label is here to stay.

Perception are at an all time high in terms of quality, affordability, ingredients, accessibility.

No surprise there.

The leading driver of private label is is purchase, is is price.

However, taste ingredients still make up about 25% of the main purchase influencing power factors.

So, so price ingredients are here as well.

So, so private label is definitely here.

Huge perception improvement and and needs to be part of a retailer's plan going forward.

So then Dave, as we close, what advice do you have for retailers who kind of are trying to navigate these changing consumer sentiments?

You know, besides looking at price, having the right assortment and merchandising, you know, two things that aren't talked about as often are about loyalty and technology within loyalty.

Consumers are engaging in loyalty programs to stretch their spending power.

About 2/3 of all consumers use a loyalty program in food and beverage and grocery and it's about 75% of purchases within the loyalty are influenced by loyalty programs.

That's even higher for consumers who are under the age of 45.

So loyalty programs, huge.

And then the other technology.

Over 60% are respondents interact with different technologies to influence their buying decisions, particularly subscription.

Subscription models influence about 75% of purchases.

In fact about 20%.

Yeah, it's crazy.

About 20% of all grocery purchases are done 100% via subscription, which is, which is crazy.

So one in five consumers are doing all of their grocery shopping online and, and about 75% are doing at least 75% of their grocery shopping online.

So subscription models are here and, and, and the main drivers besides deals and promotion, just convenience.

We live in a world where people, you know, time is money, they know what they like, they know what they don't like.

And just that frictionless approach to grocery buying, which is a daily, weekly, monthly thing is, is is huge to the consumer.

So let don't forget about loyalty and technology and they kind of go hand in hand.

Huge impact to driving purchasing decisions.

Great stuff, Dave.

Thank you.

Thank you Dave.

If you want to read the latest consumer sentiment survey from our friends at the A and M Consumer and Retail Group, you will find it in full in our show notes from today's episode.