Coles saw price inflation rise this quarter and it reckons its customers are starting to change their purchasing habits.
👉 Background: Coles is Australia’s second-biggest supermarket chain with over 2,500 retail outlets across Australia. And just like consumers, it has also become a victim of rising input costs.
👉 What happened: In fact, Coles saw price inflation rise 7.1% in this quarter (from 4.3%) and the worst affected area is fresh food, which is up 8.8%. Yikes!
👉 What else: Coles reckons its customers are starting to change their purchasing habits based on inflation fatigue.
💡Inflation fatigue is the point at which the rising inflation actually starts to change consumer behaviour. Not just pausing the purchase of a new Apple watch, but changing food-buying habits.
💡Over the last 6 months, consumers have been reasonably tolerant of price upticks, but it seems that now, they aren’t able to withstand it anymore.
💡Coles is seeing lower income households freezing more food and making meals in batches to stretch budgets.. But with the price of goods expected to continue rising, there ain’t no end in sight.
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