Are shoppers becoming less brand loyal amid the cost of living crisis?

As food prices rise by around 24% on average, customers have changed their shopping habits to keep up with increased costs.

Transcript

00:00 Food prices in particular have risen the most when it comes to the cost of living crisis,

00:05 around 24% on average. How has that changed the spending habits of average families and

00:10 what can they do to mitigate these costs?

00:12 The challenge for families with the kinds of price increases we've been seeing is it's

00:17 not the prices of luxury goods or discretionary purchases that have increased, it's the price

00:23 of really basic things and that's disproportionately affected families on lower incomes. The cost

00:29 of energy of course surged and then came back to earth a bit, the costs of fuel and clothing,

00:34 the costs of food. And as you mentioned, if the costs of basic staples at the supermarket

00:41 - bread, milk, famously olive oil - increase in price, you can substitute a little bit

00:47 for cheaper goods or go to a cheaper supermarket, but you have to eat just in the same way you

00:52 have to heat your home. And the effect of that for families has been that many have

00:57 ended up in debt, record levels of debt. Not only debt to debt suppliers, credit card

01:03 companies and other things, but also debt to current suppliers. So energy suppliers

01:09 have seen record levels of debt where consumers just haven't been able to keep up with paying

01:13 their bills on time. And that will take months or years to unwind. So even if inflation has

01:20 now fallen to more manageable levels, consumer debt at these high levels will take many years

01:27 to pay back. What can consumers do? There's hacks, we know the hacks. You can shop at

01:32 the end of the day when supermarkets start to discount, you can buy own brand products

01:37 rather than big label products. I say you can shop at a cheaper supermarket, but let's

01:42 be honest, people who are hard up have been doing all those things and the reality is

01:46 that all of us have felt the pinch. We've had to wind back on more luxury food purchases

01:51 and frankly any luxuries at all. And so life is not going to get much easier for most families

01:57 in the UK even though inflation has come down.