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Did you correctly guess the three CPG shifts? Until recently, CPG purchase behavior was starting to look fairly stable—we had normalized to a pandemic purchase level. But over the past few months there have been some shifts in CPG buying dynamics that signal anything but business as usual:
Here are three ways CPG brands can take advantage of these shifts today.
This spring and summer brought several weeks of declining CPG sales overall, but the total spending numbers are now on a slight upward trajectory: CPG spending was 6% greater as of September 4, 2021, compared to the last week of June 2021. Importantly, August 2021 CPG spending was 3% greater year-over-year—the first month that has happened in 2021 compared to a 2020 COVID month.
With the emergence and pervasive presence of the Delta variant, not only are consumers cooking more at home (again) but commodity and labor costs are also climbing, putting extra pressure on both product prices and supply chains. The result for shoppers is empty shelves at grocery stores. This is reminiscent of the early days of the pandemic when manufacturers and retailers combatted stockouts. While it is challenging to predict how long these supply chain and labor challenges will persist, as a CPG brand these changing marketplace dynamics offer you an opportunity to remind new buyers about your product.
The average number of grocery shopping trips per week that consumers are making decreased 16% between June 27 and September 4. This translates into consumers spending more on each trip to the store: the average U.S. basket size increased by 6% from the last week of June to September 4.
Pre-pandemic, the clear favorite grocery shopping day across the country was Sunday. But long gone are the days when Sunday is the biggest shopping day of the week: during different phases of the pandemic, Americans bounced between Friday and Saturday as their favorite shopping day. Though weekends are still the preferred time to shop for groceries, Americans have settled into a new weekly routine (for now) and it varies by region.
In the West and Midwest regions, it’s all about enjoying the weekend outdoors—which means getting the shopping out of the way on Friday. Southerners make more trips to the grocery store on Saturday, while those in the Northeast have fallen back into the old habit of grocery shopping on Sunday for the week ahead.
In spite of these consumer behavior shifts, there is one thing that has remained the same: brands must continue to advertise and reach their buyers or potential new buyers in order to maintain healthy brand growth and share.
Below are some case study examples we gathered of two brands—one that stopped advertising, and another that continued advertising—during the height of the pandemic when consumer demand was extremely high and shelves were even more bare.
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