There\u2019s a growing cost of living crisis in the UK. In the 12 months leading up to February 2022, prices rose by 6.2%, the fastest in 30 years. And to make matters worse, the Office for Budget Responsibility says that inflation and higher taxes from April mean that households are facing the biggest decrease in living standards since records began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given the impact of the rising cost of living, we wanted to understand the sentiments of UK consumers and the actions that they\u2019re taking in response. Our team fielded a survey of 1,037 UK consumers ages 18+ between 11 and 14 March 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over half of respondents (51%) said that they\u2019re either very or extremely concerned about their personal financial security in light of the current cost of living\u2014an increase of 6% in a matter of just three weeks. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that only 24% of consumers feel confident about spending money over the coming months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where are consumers feeling the most impact? Look no further than the grocery store, where 51% of consumers are being impacted by price changes to a moderate or large extent. As a result, they\u2019re expecting to spend a bit more in this area (30%), or even a lot more (14%), over the next three months. While they\u2019re observing higher prices across most grocery aisles, it\u2019s fresh (fruits, vegetables) and chilled foods (dairy, meat) that are hurting consumers\u2019 pocketbooks the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the rising cost of essential goods like groceries, it\u2019s natural that consumers are looking for other places to pull back. When asked where they were most likely to spend less, some similar themes rose to the top: eating out (40%), ordering takeaway (39%), and consuming alcohol at bars or pubs (34%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What other actions might UK consumers take? Forty-three percent of respondents say they expect to purchase fewer premium branded products over the next three months, and 37% are planning to spend more nights in front of the TV in lieu of nights out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What about the things they won\u2019t do without? As consumers spend less money on food and alcohol outside of the home, they\u2019re unlikely to give up things like drinking alcohol at home, TV\/streaming subscriptions, and their mobile phone contracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For nearly half of respondents (49%), price is the top ranked factor when choosing groceries to buy. When asked how their grocery shopping behaviours might evolve over the next three months, the most popular response was that they\u2019d buy more own label products (38%). What other changes will they be making?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 32% Changing the amount of snacks I buy<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 27% Visit more stores in search of value<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 25% Changing brands<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 25% Changing supermarket<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve been looking at how consumer brands are responding to the rising cost of living. Here are the top five business challenges that brands solved last week using the Toluna Start platform:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1.<\/strong> Market Understanding: How are buying habits, product usage frequency, and behavioral triggers changing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2.<\/strong> Market Knowledge: Why are customers shifting their behaviour? Is it price, value, or ESG?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3.<\/strong> Trade-Off Analysis: What are people going to spend more on? They\u2019re spending more on eating in and giving up eating out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4.<\/strong> Benefits Screening: Which benefits (price, health, sustainability) resonate the most on-pack, on-screen, and in-store?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5.<\/strong> Shelf Test: Test price perception versus competitors and own label.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the economic landscape continues to evolve, it\u2019s imperative to stay on top of changing consumer sentiment. If you\u2019re looking to transform the way you collect consumer insights, contact us today and\u00a0start knowing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a growing cost of living crisis in the UK. In the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_toluna_hide_sidebar":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,168],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-united-kingdom-de-2","entry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tolunacorporate.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tolunacorporate.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tolunacorporate.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tolunacorporate.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tolunacorporate.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tolunacorporate.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tolunacorporate.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tolunacorporate.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tolunacorporate.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}