GDR Managing Editor John O’Sullivan highlights the potential of data visualisation to educate consumers about climate change via digestible, understandable and actionable insights.
Data published by Kantar this week provides a very revealing insight into the mindset of UK consumers, who are tightening their belts in response to the cost-of-living crisis.
As reported by Retail Week, in the four weeks leading up to 7 August own-brand, private label sales accounted for 51.6% of all sales in UK supermarkets. This is a rise of 7.3% on the previous month and represents the biggest share of own-brand sales ever recorded since Kantar started tracking the market in 2008.
Kantar also reports that during the same four-week period grocery prices increased by 11.6%, suggesting that consumers are, in great numbers, swapping branded goods for supermarkets’ own products to make their under-threat budgets stretch further.
Compassion that drives long-term loyalty
Amidst this backdrop, at GDR we’ve been keeping an eye on the different ways that retailers, brands and companies are using the lure of a discount. On the one hand some retailers are showing compassion by offering short term price freezes or discounts to drive long-term loyalty. For example, UK supermarket Iceland has responded to the impact the cost-of-living crisis is having on pensioners by offering all over-60s 10% off every Tuesday.
This approach continues the trend we saw growing during the pandemic where many retailers began operating as an unofficial fourth emergency service in their communities.
A new value exchange
Other companies are using The Discount Lure in a very different way, as a clear value exchange with bargain-hunting consumers. Here, consumers are receiving discounts in return for their data, which companies are monetising in new ways. This is seen most plainly through Amazon’s recently launched Alexa Shopping List Savings in the US, which gives users money back on products they buy in any retail store in exchange for them uploading a receipt showing their purchases. In this way, Amazon is effectively using customers to mine data about purchasing habits in physical retail spaces that sit outside its own ecosystem.
At the same time, a new generation of discount-focused start-ups is also starting to emerge. Nous is an Open Banking-backed fintech start-up that gives each user personalised advice about how they can lower their household utility bills. In a similar space, Ziscuit is a US-based ‘grocery search engine’ that identifies supermarkets close to each user selling the items on their shopping list at the lowest price.
On the customer-facing side, tools like these offer highly personalised advice, often for free, about how to spend less money. But on the back-end they are also collecting rich data about consumer spending and consumption habits that they are able to monetise in different ways. The value exchanges involved in these innovations suggests that we may have reached a tipping point where customers are finally beginning to understand the value of their own data, and companies are willing to pay a fair price for it.
If you’re interested in any of the themes discussed in this article, get in touch with rachel@gdruk.com to find out how GDR’s consultancy, inspirational speaking, trends and sector reports can help drive positive change in your business.