June is here, and the weather is warming up. And though inflation remains top of mind for many consumers, purchasing behavior across categories seems to be warming up as well.
As summer swings into action, consumers are busy stocking up on their favorite warm-weather essentials. In the beverages category, store trips, dollars spent, and units moved — while still down year over year — saw a nice bump from April. Beverage brands also won back 4.4% of market share from private labels, compared to May 2023. The general merchandise category — which includes items like summer clothing, flip flops, and pool accessories — saw even better gains. In April, store trips were down 18.6% YoY and units moved were down a whopping 24.7% YoY, but in May, those numbers were down only 7.5% and 14.3% YoY, respectively.
The health & beauty category took the biggest hit in May, with store trips, dollars spent, and units moved trending down from April — and far below their numbers in May 2023. It also saw a 29.6% YoY increase in the share of purchases going to private labels, further proving consumers’ sensitivity to price when it comes to healthy and beauty products. And with more and more retailers launching their own private label beauty lines, brands should only expect the competition for consumers’ dollars to get more fierce.
As the back-to-school season rapidly approaches, it’s worth keeping these trends in mind — and taking action to drive consumers to your brand. Ibotta is a leading data source for both incentivized and organic purchases from in-store and online sales across all major U.S. retail channels. Ibotta’s first-party SKU-level data provides insights into shopper behavior across over 3 billion lines of purchase data annually. By leveraging this data strategically, brands can find ways to stand out and win back critical market share during one of the most competitive seasons of the year.
Explore the YoY trends below and drill down into your sub-category by getting in touch with an Ibotta rep today.
Category trends
Planning Ahead?
Identify over-indexing categories and track seasonal buying behavior by month with the Category Pacesetters web tool.
