Sales remain elevated for the Frozen Food and Alcohol segments, while non-food categories are seeing softer growth than in weeks past, according to the latest edition of the IRI COVID-19 Consumer Spending Tracker.
The latest edition of the tracker, which covers the period up to 3 May, has found that e-commerce continues to show strong growth compared to last year, particularly in the US, Italy, France and Spain, indicating that consumers are gradually shifting their purchasing patterns to online.
In Italy, France and Spain, online's share of the overall grocery market has remained at an 'elevated' level for several weeks now, IRI said, while in the US, most categories, apart from fresh foods and paper products are seeing a greater shift to online.
Private Label Growth
Private label has also seen an overall increase, most notably in France and Italy, with a slight acceleration in other countries, and a softening in UK food.
In some countries, while stay-at-home restrictions are starting to loosen, purchasing behaviour has remained largely unchanged, with IRI saying that this indicates that it could take some time before consumers gain confidence to return to normal shopping behaviour.
The IRI COVID-19 Consumer Spending Tracker measures consumer purchasing in the UK, US, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, New Zealand and the Netherlands.
Read the latest update here.
© 2020 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Stephen Wynne-Jones. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.