Coronavirus fears drive yearly spending high on groceries
Number of transactions for groceries settle back to normal levels but spend per shop remains high
Consumer spending on groceries peaked to a yearly high on March 2nd followed closely by March 16th
Coronavirus fears sparked a huge wave of UK consumer spending on groceries, with Monday 2nd March seeing highest volumes of grocery spending this year and last according to new analysis from Open Finance platform Moneyhub.
Consumer spending data shows groceries were 30% higher on the first Monday of March compared to the second highest day of spending seen since the same time last year - Monday 16th March 2020. Moneyhub’s analysis found that the week of Monday 2nd March had the highest spending on groceries than any other day in the last year.
Since this peak in early March, Moneyhub consumer spending data shows that while transactions for grocery items have slowed, spend per shop remains much higher than normal as individuals limit the amount of time they spend at the shop.
Moneyhub consumer spending data also showed that the amount spent on travel has dropped significantly - and almost overnight - as individuals started to work from home and adhere to government advice.
With consumer spending in tatters we would expect to see an uptick in savings. It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks if the reduced spending does indeed result in savings or perhaps increased spending online as cabin fever sets in?
At a time of such uncertainty for consumers, Moneyhub has launched an innovative spending tracker. Not only does this enable individuals to benchmark their spending against the typical Moneyhub user, it also provides the market with unique insight into the spending patterns of UK adults.
Samantha Seaton CEO of Moneyhub: “The 2nd was clearly not just another ‘Manic Monday’ - we can see from the data that consumers were evidently worried about the Covid-19 pandemic and ramped up their grocery spending in response. However, it’s encouraging to see that individuals are starting to heed government advice with the number of transactions returning to normal levels in the last week. It is particularly impactful to see in such a clear way the level of consumer spending almost halved in less than a week. It is clear to me that the action taken by the government so far to protect the economy has been entirely warranted.
“Moneyhub’s machine learning categorisation of personal and business transactions means we can track trends in real-time. For businesses, having this information at their fingertips enables quick reactions and informed modifications to their activities in order to mitigate the impact of such trends. With the situation changing every day we know that having this data in real time can be incredibly useful for business, individuals and even the government. This is why we are creating a real time tracker of these spending trends which anyone can view for free on our website.
Press contact
David Sells/Eleanor Ross at Teamspirit for Moneyhub
moneyhub@teamspirit.uk.com / 020 7360 7878