A jump of 24.5% for meat and poultry, 18% for pasta… Products sold in supermarkets are hit hard by inflation, which reached around 7% on the shelves in August over one year, and could climb to 10% by the end of the year. In a statement released on Thursday, leading retail panelist NielsenIQ observes that “the price increase of consumer products has continued at a rate comparable to that of the beginning of the year”.
What level of inflation?
“Inflation did not take a vacation in July/August”, indicates NielsenIQ, which notes an increase in the average price of so-called consumer products – those that households regularly buy in supermarkets – of 6.6% in August .
“An inflation outlook of +10% by the end of 2022 is confirmed,” notes NielsenIQ, according to which all product categories sold in August at a higher price than a year earlier.
Another specialist in the measurement of prices in supermarkets, IRI, for its part estimated the rise in prices of consumer products and fresh products at 7.9% in August, in a barometer published Thursday by the specialized media LSA .
Which products increased the most?
The product categories whose prices increased the most were meat, poultry and charcuterie, with a 24.5% increase, pasta (+18.3%), paper towels (+16%) , oil (+15.7%), butter, margarine and fresh cream (+13%).
First-price products and those known as “private brand”, that is to say created by the brands that market them, have seen their prices increase by more than three points more than national brand products, notes again NielsenIQ. This is due in particular to the fact that the costs of production and agricultural raw materials, which have been strongly inflationary since mid-2021, represent a larger share of their price compared to the national brand, where marketing expenditure is greater.
The panelist notes that “the summer categories are rather less affected by inflation than the average”. For example, ice cream prices rose by 2.53% between June and August, beer by 1.87% and insecticides by 1.25%.
What impact for households?
In June, the Inflation Observatory of the magazine 60 million consumers, of which the NielsenIQ institute is a partner, assessed the impact of these 7% price increases at 30 euros in additional expenditure per household and per month.
To cope, consumers are going downmarket, depriving themselves of certain products deemed to be less of a priority, or turning to brands deemed to be the best bidder in terms of price.
The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire meanwhile declared on France 5 on Wednesday that “we should not wait for an improvement on the inflation front before the start of 2023”.