2024-02-25 22:30:00
The inflation has changed the way many Americans shop. Now, these changes in consumption habits help reduce the inflation.
Fed up with the prices remain, on average, around 19% above what they were before the pandemic, consumers are fighting back. At grocery stores, they switch from name brands to private label items — also called white label, private label, or private label —, shop at discount stores, or simply buy fewer items like snacks or gourmet foods.
More Americans are also buying used cars, rather than new, forcing some dealerships to offer discounts on new cars once more.
But growing consumer opposition to what critics decry as a rise in prices disproportionate has been most evident in the case of food and consumer goods such as paper towels and napkins.
In recent months, consumer resistance has led large food companies to respond by drastically reducing their price increases. prices from the highs of the last three years. This does not mean that the prices of groceries will fall back to the levels of a few years ago, although for some products – including eggs, apples and milk – the prices are below their maximums. But the smaller increases in prices of food should help to further cool the inflation overall, which has fallen sharply from a high of 9.1% in 2022 to 3.1%.
Public frustration with prices has become a central issue in President Joe Biden’s bid for re-election. Surveys show that, despite the dramatic reduction in inflationmany consumers are dissatisfied that prices are still much higher than before the inflation will begin to accelerate in 2021.
Biden has echoed criticism from many left-wing economists that corporations increased their prices more than necessary to cover their higher costs, and that allowed them to increase their profits. The White House has also attacked “shrinkflation,” which is when instead of increasing the price of a product, a company reduces the quantity inside the package. In a video broadcast on Super Bowl Sunday, Biden denounced the redundancy as a “scam.”
The reaction of consumers once morest prices highs suggests to many economists that the inflation should decrease even more. That would make this episode of inflation was markedly different from the debilitating peaks of prices of the 1970s and early 1980s, which took longer to defeat. When a persists inflation high, consumers often develop an inflationary psychology: prices constantly increasing causes them to accelerate their purchases before costs rise further, a trend that can perpetuate the inflation.
“That was the fear: that everyone would tolerate prices higher,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY, a consulting firm, who notes that has not happened. “I don’t think we have entered a high-speed regime.” inflation”.
Instead, this time many consumers have reacted like Stuart Dryden, a commercial bank underwriter who lives in Arlington, Virginia. On a recent visit to his usual supermarket, Dryden, 37, pointed out the wide disparities in prices between Kraft Heinz brand products and its store-brand competitors, which it now favors.
Dryden, for example, loves cream cheese and bagels. A 12-ounce tub of Kraft Philadelphia cream cheese costs $6.69. The store brand, he pointed out, costs only $3.19.
A package of 24 individual Kraft cheese slices costs $7.69; the store’s own brand, $2.99. And a 900-gram (32-ounce) bottle of Heinz ketchup costs $6.29, while the alternative costs just $1.69. Similar gaps existed for macaroni and cheese and grated cheese products.
“Just those five products together already cost almost $30,” Dryden said. The alternatives cost less than half as much, he estimated — regarding $13.
“I’ve been trying private label options (from stores), and the quality is the same and it’s almost a no-brainer to switch from products I used to buy a ton of to private label,” Dryden added.
Kraft Heinz spokesman Alex Abraham said its costs rose 3% in the final three months of last year, but the company increased its prices only 1%.
“We are doing everything we can to find efficiencies in our factories and other parts of our business to offset and mitigate further increases in prices”Abraham added.
Last week, Kraft Heinz said sales fell in the final three months of last year as more consumers opted for cheaper brands.
Dryden has taken other steps to save money: A year ago, she moved into a new apartment following her previous landlord increased her rent by regarding 50%. His old apartment was next to Whole Foods, a relatively expensive grocery store. He now shops at a nearby Amazon Fresh and has started visiting the discount store Aldi every two weeks.
Samuel Rines, investment strategist at Corbu, says PepsiCo, Kimberly-Clark, Procter & Gamble and many other consumer food and packaged goods companies took advantage of rising input costs stemming from supply chain disruptions and the Russian invasion of Ukraine to drastically increase its prices —and with it, your profits— in 2021 and 2022.
A contributing factor was that millions of Americans enjoyed solid wage increases and received stimulus checks and other government aid, making it easier for them to pay prices Taller.
Still, some denounced the phenomenon as “greedflation” or “avariflation” —inflation out of greed. And in a March 2023 research paper, economist Isabella Weber of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, referred to that as “inflation of the seller”.
However, late last year, many of the same companies discovered that the strategy was no longer working. Most consumers long ago spent the savings they built up during the pandemic.
Lower-income consumers, in particular, rack up credit card debt and fall behind on their payments. Americans generally spend more cautiously. Daco notes that overall sales during the holiday shopping season increased only 4% — and for the most part that was a reflection of prices higher and not because consumers bought more things.
As an example, Rines points to Unilever, which makes, among other products, Hellman’s mayonnaise, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Dove soaps. Unilever increased its prices 13.3% on average across all its brands in 2022. Its sales volume fell 3.6% that year. In response, he increased the prices only 2.8% last year; sales increased 1.8%.
“We are beginning to see that the consumer is no longer willing to accept prices higher,” Rines said. “So companies were starting to become a little more skeptical regarding their ability to make price the driver of their revenue. They had to recover those volumes and the consumer did not react in a way that they liked.”
Unilever itself recently attributed poor sales performance in Europe to “share losses to own brands.”
Other companies have noticed this too. After its sales fell in the final three months of last year, PepsiCo executives said they would slow sales increases this year. prices and they would focus more on driving sales.
“In 2024 we will see… the normalization of cost, the normalization of inflation”said general director Ramón Laguarta. “So we see everything coming back to our (trends of prices) long-term”.
Jeffrey Harmening, CEO of General Mills, which makes Cheerios, Chex Cereal, Progresso soups and dozens of other brands, has acknowledged that his customers are increasingly looking for bargains.
And McDonald’s executives have said that consumers with incomes less than $45,000 a year come less frequently and spend less when they do, adding that the company plans to highlight its lower-priced items.
“Consumers are more cautious—and tired—of pricesand we will continue to be guided by consumers in our purchasing decisions. prices”Ian Borden, the company’s chief financial officer, told investors.
Officials at the Federal Reserve, the main anti-corruption institution inflation country, have cited consumers’ growing reluctance to pay prices high as a key reason why they expect the inflation fall steadily to its annual target of 2%.
“Companies are telling us that sensitivity to prices it’s much higher now,” Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and a member of the Fed’s interest rate-setting committee, said last week. “Consumers don’t want to buy unless they see a 10% discount… This is a major improvement in the role consumers play in curbing the inflation”.
Surveys by regional Federal Reserve banks have revealed that companies in all industries expect to make increases in prices minors this year. The New York Federal Reserve says companies in its region plan to increase prices at an average of around 3% this year, up from 5% in 2023 and between 7% and 9% in 2022.
These trends suggest that companies were already on track to slow their profit increases. prices ahead of Biden’s most recent attacks on the abusive surge prices.
Claudia Sahm, founder of SAHM Consulting, a macroeconomic analysis and tax policy consultancy, and a former Federal Reserve economist, said “consumers are more powerful than President Biden.”
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