Consumer Spending Intentions & Brand Preferences
Each month Prosper Insights & Analytics surveys over 7,000 US consumers on a broad selection of spending intentions and retail behaviors. They graciously gave permission for us to republish these valuable shopper insights and share it with Midwest Retail Services clients.
Prosper’s unique ‘fill in the blank’ write-in questions combined with emotional drivers, like impulsivity and happiness, result in a data bank used by leading brands, retailers, marketers and financiers to understand the dynamic and ever-changing consumer.
Prosper subscribers receive the full-results of the June Consumer Intentions & Actions data, but here’s a sampling of what they are seeing….
June Survey Insights*
CONSUMER SENTIMENT:
Sentiment decreased 5.4 percentage points since May, with a current 51.6% who are confident/very confident in the economy.
Historical Perspective: Historically, consumer confidence has been a steady incline since June, 2009. This month’s reading is up 21.4 percentage points since 10 years ago.
STRATEGY:
Practical Purchases
With confidence declining, pragmatic purchases switch directions with an upward trend. This month’s reading shows that 36.1% of adults 18+ are becoming more practical in their purchases, which is up almost 3 percentage points since last month (33.6%).
Focus on Needs
Shoppers’ focus on just what they need has increased half a percentage point since June of last year. This month’s reading at 38.7% is up .7 percentage points since last month, which may be due to the decline in confidence.
ONLINE SHOPPING:
Online Services
Consumers rank “low prices” as the most important ecommerce service (87.0% say it is important/very important in June). However, the importance of “free shipping” (85.3%) is rising over the last ten years and continues to narrow the gap between itself and “low prices”.
Boomers want it all
While low prices and free shipping are important across all generations, these services peak interest in the Boomer generation specifically. Gen-Xers take a close second.
Millennials, Gen X-ers take it a step further
While ranking much lower in importance of low prices and free shipping, same-day delivery is important to younger generations. Boomers will follow the trend as more of these services are available and convenient to them.
SPENDING SCORE*:
This month’s reading reports a spending score of 85.36, which is about 1.06 points lower than last month’s score (86.42). This means there are fewer consumers who are planning to spend more than there are consumers planning to spend less. The spending score has decreased .53 percentage points since June of last year (85.89). The chart below shows an upward trend since June of 2009 when the score was 69.52.
*The spending score is an index that goes from 0 to 100. An index of 100 means there is an equal number of consumers planning to spend more than less. An index under 100 means there is a smaller number of consumers planning to spend more than there are consumers planning to spend less.
Additional Insights from June 2019:
The top three stores to shop at for pet supplies as of June 2019 are: Walmart (23.8%), PetSmart (18.6%), and Chewy.com (11.5%).
Year over Year Numbers:
48.9% of adults 18+ have Amazon Prime memberships, versus 47.3% in June 2018.
48.9% of adults 18+ say that familiar labels are important when buying clothes, versus June 2018, when 50% said it was important.
The top three vehicle brands people plan to purchase in the next 6 months are: Honda (11.8%), Ford (11.2%), and Toyota (10.7%), compared to June of 2018 when the top vehicles were: Ford (12.2%), Toyota (11.7%), and Chevrolet (11.3%).
Membership shares for warehouse clubs are: Costco (29.2%), Sam’s Club (25.2%), and BJ’s (11.4%), compared to June 2018 where warehouse club shares were: Costco (27.7%), Sam’s Club (24.3%), and BJ’s (11.2%).
The Fourth of July:
Plans for the Fourth of July holiday vary where 61.2% of adults 18+ say they plan to celebrate with a cookout/barbeque or picnic, 40.5% of adults say they plan on participating in a community event like fireworks, and 13.9% of people plan to go on a vacation for the holiday.
*The June Survey is comprised of 7,553 respondents Age 18+
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About Prosper Insights & Analytics™
Prosper Insights & Analytics is a global leader in “consumer intent” data serving the financial services, marketing technology, and retail industries. We provide global authoritative market information on US and China consumers via curated insights and analytics. By integrating a variety of data including economic, behavioral and attitudinal data, Prosper helps companies accurately predict consumers’ future behavior to help identify market behaviors, optimize marketing efforts, and improve the effectiveness of affiliate, mobile, email, print, and social-media demand generation campaigns. ProsperInsights.com
Contact:
Prosper Insights & AnalyticsTM
Phil Rist, EVP Strategic Insights
phil@goProsper.com
614-846-0146
