SUMMARY While some areas of the economy have recently exhibited signs of cooling inflation, this has not been true for the food and beverage categories. In fact, the latest IRI research shows retail food and beverage inflation up 13.4% year over year in August. At 1.6%, August also brought the highest month-over-month category price increases so far in 2022. As an IRI report shows, this inflationary pressure is creating volume declines in most categories and is hitting low-income households hardest. In response, these families are pulling back on overall purchases and trading out of the indulgence and splurge categories. Quick trips are also on the upswing, suggesting a shift to more deal-seeking shopper behavior.

SUMMARY The number of receipt apps has exploded in recent years. Some exist mainly to drive affiliate marketing income and regularly feed promotional offers to their panelists. These activities compromise the ability of these apps to generate accurate consumer insights. To get reliable information, it’s important to choose a receipt panel using data from a receipt app designed with a strict focus on generating consumer insights. IRI’s latest brief explores this topic fully, highlighting the dangers of using influenced panels and the benefits of choosing a research-quality panel instead.

Michelle Bennett Michelle.bennett@circana.com How bias in receipt apps affects the data. Influenced panels can skew consumer insights. The number of receipt apps has exploded in recent years. Some of them are effective tools that help marketers generate accurate insights into consumer behavior. Others are ill-suited to this task because they were created mainly to drive affiliate marketing income. Their very design influences panelists in a way that compromises their reliability as a source of consumer insights. Your choice of a non-biased receipt panel will impact your insight- driven decisions. The Problem of Selection Bias Selection bias can occur when a study systematically influences participants to make their behavior inconsistent with the population they are supposed to represent. When this happens, the “insights” generated from the data source are fundamentally skewed. This problem is difficult to avoid when you use receipt apps that are designed to make money from “affiliate commissions” collected from the brands the app partners with. These apps deliver promotional offers to consumers on behalf of other companies, including CPG companies. And these coupons and deals are designed to spur app users to buy certain CPG products or shop at certain stores. The result is that the app itself directly influences the purchase behavior of these app participants, by design. And this influence undermines the ability of these panels to give you accurate insights. At first glance, some of these panels may seem appealing for consumer insights because they boast large numbers of panelists. But the size is irrelevant when the panel design itself prevents you from uncovering the true purchasing behavior of the real consumer populations you are looking to study. Panels influenced by special promotions and coupons can give you inaccurate data on a wide range of measures, including: How your sales stack up to competitors Your number of new buyers Total basket size Shifts in purchase behaviors Demographic-specific purchasing behaviors Unbiased receipt apps provide better insights. The solution To avoid misleading, inaccurate results, it’s important to choose a consumer insights provider that leverages data from a receipt app that was designed with a focus on building a consumer insights panel. These apps do not try to influence participants’ purchasing behaviors. The app management and incentive structure these panels incorporate is instead designed specifically to minimize selection bias and keep panelists engaged. Their goal by design is to encourage panelists to scan all their receipts so you can track their actual, unbiased purchasing behavior more fully and accurately. Panels built from receipt apps that are designed to sway consumer behavior can lead to bad decisions that cost your company time and money. Unbiased information is essential to get a true read of consumer behavior, the drivers of customer loyalty and the triggers of customer churn. By choosing a receipt panel designed for the purpose of generating accurate consumer insights, you can avoid the affiliate marketing trap and all the distortions that accompany it. And you can make decisions with confidence based on the accurate, actionable omnichannel insights that only a well- designed receipt panel can provide.

SUMMARY Receipt panels help marketers understand how and where consumers shop. This includes channel shifting among consumers as well as getting a read on channels that are harder to cover. While coverage is important, businesses need both accuracy and granularity to get the right insights. Receipt panels that are not integrated with an external source of truth like point-of-sale data are not equipped to deliver in two key areas: breadth and granularity. As a result, companies can miss important details and make business decisions based on incomplete or even inaccurate information. Read this brief to understand more about how stand-alone receipt panels fall short and why a more integrated approach is the answer for both more complete insights and for understanding growth opportunities.

SUMMARY Inflation continues to affect the convenience store channel more dramatically than the larger multi-outlet landscape. As U.S. inflation accelerated and gas prices rose in Q2 2022, c-store shoppers opted for less-expensive items and decreased the number of items in their basket. IRI’s new report, “U.S. Convenience Store Inflation Impact,” explores the latest key trends in the convenience channel and the most effective ways that retailers can respond to them. Highlights 16% of c-store shoppers are visiting the channel less, citing higher prices. They’re looking for more promotions but see fewer items they want being promoted. Price increases are being partially offset by a shift to private label products, which are outperforming national brands and grew 12.2% YOY in Q2. Lower-income shoppers lead the trends of declining dollars per basket and the shift to private label. Money-saving promotions and value-focused marketing are the best bets to attract c-store shoppers right now. Retailers should shift assortments to increase value offerings, especially private label products with low opening price points in key categories. It’s important to react quickly to competitive pricing and manage price gaps on key items.

SUMMARY The beverage alcohol category continues to buck CPG trends. Amid rampant inflation, price increases for beverage alcohol continue to significantly lag other categories. And beer, wine and spirit customers are still shifting from value to premium price tiers. This 2022 midyear alcohol update shows that consumption trends are fluctuating as on-premise consumption continues to recover despite inflation and labor challenges and ongoing COVID-19 unpredictability. In this environment, better-for-you options and pre-mixed cocktail products continue to expand, and premium wine and spirits continue to gain e-commerce share. A focus on promotions, digital targeting, retailer websites and varied delivery options will be a promising strategy for ongoing growth.

Consumer Confidence Remained Steady To Start 2025 Household incomes increased across China’s foodservice industry to start the year. This fueled expectations to spend more on dining out and other areas like travel entertainment. This month’s China Consumer Sentiment Study shows the latest consumer attitudes after celebrating the CNY festival. Highlights:   Many consumers reported their household incomes increased in January. But younger consumers reported reduced incomes.  Expectations to dine out also increased in January, although there was an increase in consumers who expect to dine out less now that the CNY festival is over.  Foodservice remained one of the top categories consumers expect to increase their spending over the next month.  Recap of 2024 CNY performance, including the top channel and category trends.

The Global State of Beauty and Outlook from Circana Inspire actions and unlock business growth with this year’s B Book! Featuring the most complete view of the global beauty industry in a convenient online format, our B Book shines new light on the biggest trends of 2024 and how they will shape the year ahead. Get the latest perspectives from our experts around the world to navigate the changing landscape in 2025 and beyond. At Circana, we deliver unprecedented true clarity on beauty trends across prestige and mass markets with granularity and precision you can’t get anywhere else. Our complete views, unparalleled superior technology, and deep industry expertise allow us to push behind insights into ideas that lead to better outcomes. Circana is a leading advisor on the complexity of consumer behavior, inspiring actions that unlock business growth. Questions? Contact your Circana account representative or email  contactus@circana.com .

Foodservice, General Merchandise, and Retail Trends from 2024 Emerging trends and preferences fueled growth across China’s foodservice, general merchandise, and retail industries in 2024. But which trends will shape the year ahead? Our Planning for Growth in China report provides insights into the top trends to know and the latest consumer behaviors so you can stay ahead of this dynamic marketplace. Highlights:  Hotpot was the fastest-growing major category while snacking growth slowed   Livestreaming channels continued to gain momentum across general merchandise categories  Consumers consolidated their grocery purchases into fewer retail channels

At the start of 2025, business expectations were high driven by two converging factors within B2B ; a significant pool of notebooks and desktops at or near end-of-life, and the sunsetting of Windows 10 scheduled for October. While a major PC refresh is a significant driver of revenue and margin, a less visible though potentially richer opportunity exists with complementary categories and products that are bought concurrently with the host device. Enter attach. Historically, attach rates have been near impossible to capture and track, due to the lack of transaction-level data, leaving only opinions, outdated assumptions, and estimated ratios to drive strategy and tactics. Today, transaction-level analytics ( Circana’s B2B Solution Insights ) provide unparalleled visibility into transaction-level data, empowering OEMs and partners to see exactly what is being purchased alongside host devices, by category frequency, size of business, and sector vertical, along with volume and transaction-level pricing. By analyzing attachment frequencies—say, how often docking stations or warranties accompany notebook PCs—it highlights patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. For OEMs, this means smarter bundling decisions that boost revenue and margins without inflating costs. For partners, it is an opportunity to deepen relationships with end-user customers by offering tailored solutions that align specifically with their business needs. Be sure to remember deal size and volume pricing. Maximizing identified attach opportunities requires knowledge of not only frequency, but order quantity and transactional pricing by volume. Core to the solution is setting proper level discounting for bid-based opportunities by identifying competitive pricing without unnecessarily conceding margin. The forecasted PC refresh is expected to generate significant revenue in 2025 and 2026 yet attach-based strategies offer incremental opportunities today. By adding attach and competitive pricing, leading OEMs and partners can benefit well beyond a PC refresh.

Consumption Coupons Support Foodservice Growth Household incomes for China’s foodservice consumers continued to stabilize to start the year. But consumers reduced their willingness to increase spend on foodservice in the wake of CNY festivities. This month’s China Consumer Sentiment Study highlights how government consumption coupons affect spending expectations across China’s dynamic market.   Highlights: Household incomes improved stronger for younger aged consumers and those in Upper Tier cities.  With CNY festivities behind them, consumers softened their expectations to dine out more.  Fewer consumers are expecting to increase their spending in the coming month, but foodservice still ranks higher than retail.  30% of consumers used government coupons for meals. Most were used at FSR restaurants.

While the center store grocery space has grown slowly in the past two years, sales have lagged. A typical grocery shelf is now 7% less productive than it was in 2022. This makes accurate, performance-aligned measurements more important than ever to protect and improve shelf space allocation for retailers and manufacturers. Highlights Certain aisles, such as liquor, frozen meat, poultry, seafood, and nutrition, have grown in space without corresponding performance improvements. The shift to e-commerce should drive space changes. Fresh categories showed stronger performance trends compared to center store products. Food and beverage categories, despite driving 84% of the space growth, are still under-spaced in the center store. Fresh categories show stronger performance trends vs. center store products, which is another pressure point for justifying center store space.

Our 2025 Definitive U.S. Restaurant Ranking Report , offers insights into evolving consumer habits, performance trends, and the top players in the industry. It leverages multiple data products and services from our unmatched research product portfolio combined with experienced analyst estimates. Consumer spend estimates represent each chain’s total U.S. system for the year ending in December 2024 and are anchored on CREST®, Circana’s flagship, syndicated study of consumer purchases of restaurant-prepared meals, snacks and beverages.

China Consumer Sentiment Study How Consumers Reacted to JD’s Entry into the Delivery Market In March, consumers' incomes fell back, dining out stabilized, and the Qingming holiday drove travel, entertainment, and sports spending. This month’s China Consumer Sentiment Study  highlights March performance, the impact of the Qingming holiday, and awareness and penetration related to JD’s entry into the delivery market. Highlights: Net growth in household incomes has fallen back, with lower-tier households less well off. The share of reduced dining out was slightly lower due to the Qingming holiday. Qingming holiday boosted spending expectations for travel, entertainment, and sports. There was less benefit for dining out. Consumers in lower-tier cities were more willing to spend in most categories.