The Era of One-Stop Grocery Shopping Is Over

Consumers are making 8% more trips to different retailers as inflation continues to upend household budgets

By Rachel Wolfe of The WSJ. 

One thing that I always talked about with inflation was that one of its costs was all the things we had to do to avoid it. This article seems like an example of that.

Here is a passage from the related post linked below about Germany in the early 1920s when they had hyperinflation that is an another example of costly behavior:

"By mid-1923 workers were being paid as often as three times a day. Their wives would meet them, take the money and rush to the shops to exchange it for goods."

Now excerpts from Wolfe's article:

"Consumers bought groceries from an average of 20.7 different retailers between March 2023 and February 2024 according to data firm Numerator, up 23% from the same months between 2019 and 2020. In addition to visiting more stores, shoppers are also traveling to cheaper ZIP Codes to shop"

"latest example of consumers changing their behavior in response to the higher of prices in our lives"

"with groceries taking up the highest percentage of household budgets in 30 years"

"Grocery prices are up 21% in three years"

"shoppers are making 8% more trips than they did last year"

"Traditional grocers ate up 66% of total consumer spending on food at home in 2022"

"That’s down from 69% in 2017. "

"Roger Beahm, a marketing professor at Wake Forest University School of Business, says some food stores are now leaning into differentiation rather than trying to be all things to all people." 

Related posts:

World War I Finally Ends (a post from 2010 when Germany made the last payment for war reparations from World War I in 2010 that may have contributed to the hyper inflation)  

When workers were paid twice a day and given half-hour shopping breaks (Germany, 1923)