{"id":16127,"date":"2025-06-26T11:16:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T11:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/16127\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T11:16:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T11:16:11","slug":"what-it-means-when-consumers-are-value-seeking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/16127\/","title":{"rendered":"What it means when consumers are “value seeking”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consumers are not feeling so hot in this economy. The Conference Board\u2019s measure of consumer confidence fell again in June<\/a>, after briefly rebounding in May.<\/p>\n

Along those lines, on the quarterly earnings call<\/a> for General Mills Wednesday morning, the company’s CEO said consumers are \u201cpressured by widespread uncertainty.\u201d Because of that, they \u201cexpect consumers to remain cautious and continue seeking value.”<\/p>\n

When retailers say consumers are \u201cvalue seeking,\u201d what they mostly mean is people are trying to save some money<\/a> because they\u2019re worried about their economic future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re looking at purchasing alternative ingredients, store brands<\/a>. For travel, they’re booking alternative lodging, they’re booking lower cost airline fares. They’re buying used cars,\u201d said Mike Daher, a U.S. consumer industry leader at Deloitte.<\/p>\n

A lot more consumers have been looking for those lower costs for a while now \u2014 ever since the big bout of post-pandemic inflation.<\/p>\n

Mark Cohen, former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, said the prospect of tariffs hitting consumer prices soon could keep the trend going.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re in for a bumpy ride, and the consumer is going to have to cut back and trade down. That’s going to leave winners and losers in the economy with regard to retailers and brands,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Because, he said, a lot of brands won\u2019t be able to keep a lid on prices as they face higher costs.<\/p>\n

They also can\u2019t necessarily use the same tactics now that they did a few years ago. Like shrinkflation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, same size package, but less in the package. That raised a lot of issues for people around, you know, \u2018Do I trust you? I know what you’re doing. I’m not stupid,\u2019\u201d said Wendy Liebmann, CEO of WSL Strategic Retail.<\/p>\n

Because value seeking, she said, isn\u2019t just about saving money. It\u2019s also about consumers getting better quality and convenience out of the money they do spend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Liebmann said that\u2019s why a lot of price-conscious consumers are still opting for Amazon Prime or Walmart Plus subscriptions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they see the value proposition of I’ll pay the, whatever it is, 80, $90 a year, so I’m paying more, but actually I’m saving on the transportation to get to the store to save money,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In times of chaos, Liebmann said, consumers take control any way they can. Retailers just have to respond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consumers are not feeling so hot in this economy. The Conference Board\u2019s measure of consumer confidence fell again…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,4051,16041,16043,79,67,132,68,16042],"class_list":{"0":"post-16127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-consumer-spending","10":"tag-consumers","11":"tag-economic-outlook","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-value-seeking"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114749386463688696","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}