Less frequency but larger baskets

Peter Toth – Commercial Director

It seems that we have materialized the second wave of the pandemic and restrictions are already getting more drastic, However, is this reflected in customer’s behavior? Signs clearly indicate parallel trends between the first cycle of the pandemic (March-April) and September, though not as extreme. Domestic chain’s value sales has increased by 13%, which is not the height one would think, however, if we look at these trends closely, we will see that the first two weeks of September produced an average of 21.7% increase in sales and it was the remainder of the month that reduced this greatly. Could this be due to the end of month people having less to spend or that we have learned from our mistakes and do not seek out items such as toilet paper, yeast or preserved and canned foods?

Based on the numbers, we see a continuous trend of shoppers visiting less frequently (-9% in transaction numbers), meanwhile there is yet another shift to larger basket values as they yet again increased by 33%. All this increase happened without the presence of impulse baskets that are still lagging behind as they are still missing over a quarter of these 1500 HUF or below baskets.

Although shopping frequency is still falling behind, some categories do not feel this impact. One of these is the „meat” category that has increased its sales by nearly 20% versus year-ago, Similar numbers are visible for beer.

However when inspecting the first two weeks of October, the rough is yet to come, as large basket values are now close to reaching 18,000 HUF. These baskets prior to the pandemic were 14,678 HUF.