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The severity of the pandemic outbreak, being more intense in urban regions compared to rural regions in the country, has had an impact on the shopping preferences of different consumer cohorts. A trend that has come out is that urban consumers were seen opting for higher priced biscuits packs during the April-December period.
According to data sourced from retail intelligence platform, Bizom, consumers in the urban regions have increasingly been opting for biscuit packs or SKUs (stock keeping units) priced at ₹30 and above, in the first three quarters of the current fiscal. The contribution of higher priced biscuit packs accounted for 41 per cent to the overall category sales in the April-June quarter, which further increased to 50 per cent in the October-December quarter in the urban regions.
In the rural regions, contribution of biscuits priced under ₹10 has been growing. In the April-June quarter of the current financial year, share of SKUs of biscuits priced below ₹10 stood at 27 per cent and surged to 34 per cent in the October-December quarter.
Mobility, rural impact
Akshay D’Souza, Chief Marketing Officer at Bizom said, “In urban centres, consumer mobility has been limited since the pandemic outbreak. Urban consumers were keen on reducing the frequency of their shopping trips and focused on stocking up on bigger packs. Hence, we are seeing this preferences.”
“In rural regions however, mobility of consumers hasn’t been as widely impacted as urban centres. Here, typically, a biscuit pack is the equivalent of a meal and crucial part of the daily spend. It is this discerning choice in the face of economic adversity created by the pandemic that has shifted preference increasingly towards more affordable price points in the rural region,” he added.
Mayank Shah, Senior Category Head at Parle Products agreed with the observations put forth by Bizom.
“The economic uncertainty impacted consumer spending habits in the first three quarters in urban regions and we also saw trends of some consumers downgrading to value biscuits from premium biscuits even if they opted for bigger packs ,” he said. Shah also pointed out that the urban consumption recovery trends have been visible since January and expected them to sustain in the coming months.
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