Jul 9

Written by: IRI Blog
7/9/2009 10:32 AM

It is no secret that the ongoing economic downturn is continuing to affect consumers’ shopping and purchase behaviors.  Consumers are eating out less, reducing the number of doctor visits and foregoing vacations to stretch their limited dollars.  But, which consumer groups are driving these cost-saving strategies?  The latest research from Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), “Competing in a Transforming Economy 4.0: The New Equilibrium" shows the specific consumer segmentations that are playing an important role in understanding the drivers of saving strategies. Information about these key consumer brackets can help retailers and manufacturers identify and connect with their most critical customers – those that are continuously spurring their growth.

We’ve had an ongoing conversation going with consumers since the beginning of the downturn and found that a new equilibrium is emerging showing that behaviors and strategies consumers have implemented to weather the storm will last well beyond economic recovery.  The scope of our research continues to examine how economic pressures have driven different types of consumers—by income level, household composition and even varying consumer mindsets—to change their spending strategies.  These factors added to studying common spending, self-reliance and self-health strategies that are becoming common place in today’s environment have shown us a few key points to consider:

While households with kids are most likely to reduce or postpone spending on non-grocery purchases, affordable indulgences are quickly becoming a theme for this segment of consumers. In fact, 78 percent of households with kids earning under $55,000 are postponing non-grocery purchases completely.  Yet, in contrast, 64 percent of this same consumer segment are treating themselves to affordable indulgences.

IRI uncovered three emerging categories of shoppers: optimists, maintainers and
pessimists. IRI discovered that pessimists exemplify many of the attitudes that are driving behavioral change across channels and categories, such as searching for sale prices (87 percent versus 82 percent for all households), making personal care products last longer (62 percent versus 55 percent for all households), and buying fewer prepared meals at grocery stores (61 percent versus 55 percent for all households).

IRI Webinar
IRI is offering a free mini-webinar, entitled “Competing in a Transforming Economy 4.0: An Update on Critical Watch Points” on July 9 at 1 p.m. CT to further discuss these findings.To register for the webinar, hosted by John Porter, please visit:
http://us.infores.com/NewsEvents/EventsWebinars/CompetinginaTransformingEconomy/tabid/184/Default.aspx

To learn more about the study, visit:
http://us.infores.com/ProductsSolutions/AllProducts/AllProductsDetail/tabid/159/productid/122/Default.aspx.

For pricing and additional information, please contact John Porter at john.porter@infores.com.
The Transforming Economy 4.0 report is the current installment in a series of report from IRI, in which we investigate shopper attitudes and behaviors in order to identify key changes and trends of value to the CPG community.

Best,
John Porter
Partner of Consulting and Innovation

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