This is no surprise to anyone. With galloping food inflation (14.8% in February 2023, 15.9% in March), the French have had to review their consumption habits. Exit, therefore, high quality products, households are now turning to private label products, says Le Parisien.
“At the very beginning, in March 2022, we were looking at the number of categories that were inflationary and the number of categories that were not yet inflationary. We stopped very quickly because 100% of the consumer categories were affected, ”explains Emmanuel Fournet, expert at the NielsenIQ consumption monitoring firm, to France Info.
Purchases of consumer goods thus fell by 5% in volume during the first quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022 in large and medium-sized stores, a decline that has intensified over the past two weeks (-7, 2% and -9.2%).
If the drop in consumption of certain products has a cause other than inflation, such as those of drugstore products (hydroalcoholic gels) with the end of the Covid-19 crisis (-72.3%) or that of frozen pizzas after the death of two children in the Buitoni contaminated pizza case (-20.5%), others are simply explained by the crisis.
Other products, considered luxury, are also disappearing from the carts. This is the case for fresh foie gras (-65.1%), champagne (-18.2%) or luxury beers (-16%). The French also ignore more meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. “Over the period from January 1 to March 19, 2023, meat and fruit and vegetables fell by 5% in volume in the space of a year, and fresh fish by 14%”, points out for her part Gaëlle Le Floch, the marketing director of Kantar Worldpanel, with the daily.