Basket Value is through the roof since COVID-19

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Hungarian Customers have started to rapidly change their everyday shopping habits; these reflect the changes happening worldwide. Prior to the pandemic outburst, 43.3% of all Hungarian chain’s baskets were impulse, and hence below 1000 HUF value sales per basket. These customers placed 2.6 products into their baskets. These products were accounting for ~ 11.5% of domestic chain’s overall value sales. Medium baskets, which are between 2,000HUF and 5,000 HUF made up 25% of all customer baskets which constituted for 40.7% of total value sales. “Big-shopping” baskets that are 10,000 HUF or over made up only 3.1% of total baskets but were worth as much as 22% of total Value Sales. These shoppers placed nearly 24 products in their basket.

This has significantly changed. In February the changes were not so drastic, but day by day, the shift of the clusters has become more extreme. If looking at the first half of March (2nd of March to the 15th of March) the impulse basket’s share has dropped from 43.3% to 39.7% which now makes up 10.1% of total domestic sales. The biggest change was to the “big baskets” as they have now placed nearly twice the products in their baskets with a whopping 38,38 products per basket. We can call these shoppers “hoarders” during the pandemic, as they are the ones stock piling products. They have now more than doubled their basket share to 7.1% which now makes up 26.8% of domestic sales. Big shoppers used to spend 17,599 HUF per basket in 2019, which by middle of March has increased all the way to 20,001 HUF.