Macroeconomics Insight Center

Key takeaways:  Even with a return to top-line retail sales growth, modest growth is expected in the coming months as high unemployment remains. Online and home improvement were among the biggest beneficiaries of stimulus checks that went out starting in mid-April. Shoppers were slow ...

Key takeaways:  The record top-line decline partly reflects a broader rollout of government policies to close nonessential businesses in April. Spending on consumables remained abnormally high but faded relative to March. This trend was evident in the grocery channel. However, drugstores ...

Necessity spurs quick action and innovation. Grocery stores and other retailers’ efforts to combat the adverse effects of COVID-19 illustrate this concept. In April, Publix exemplified quick action and innovation when it rolled out contactless payment across its stores, including its new ...

Key takeaways: Top-line growth picked up as stocking up outweighed the large number of physical stores closed due to social-distancing policies. Stock-up sales fed record growth in the combined consumables-focused channels and perhaps the home improvement channel. Shoppers didn’t ...

Key takeaways  Shoppers surveyed through ShopperScape® around the time the stock market selloff began in late February signaled they were keeping their spending plans steady. Top-line retail growth benefited a great deal from a comparison to very weak growth in the year-ago period ...

COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has emerged as the pernicious element that has often contributed to past US recessions — an unpredictable and hard-to-quantify global event. The global disease joins the two other common recession ingredients — shifting policies ...

A delay in the processing of tax refunds has likely dampen retail sales growth in the first two months of 2020. Cash Flow consumers are likely the most directly affected given they have limited savings to fall back on. Suppliers and retailers that operate in the discounter or mass/value channels ...

Despite the increasing numbers of cases of COVID-19 across Asia, the top fear is not falling sick but the threat that the virus may hurt individuals’ financial health, according to a recent study* conducted by Kantar.  As the global financial markets plummet in what seems to be the ...

Key takeaways   Shoppers surveyed through ShopperScape® signaled that they would curtail some of their spending after the holiday, likely to pay down credit card balances and recoup savings. Online shoppers dialed back their spending in January after driving the strongest nonstore ...

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