Study: Grocery shoppers prioritizing low prices amid food, financial pressures
Americans' perceptions of food and financial insecurity is at the highest rate since August 2023.
That's one of the findings of the 11th "wave" of Dunnhumby's Consumer Trends Tracker (CTT), which also found that over 35% percent of American families with children skipped a meal in the last month due to financial reasons. Overall, 28.5% of consumers said they have reduced their meal size or skipped meals due to financial hardships.
The quarterly study, now in its third year, also found consumers perceive food-at-home inflation is 19.4%, 16.7 points higher than its actual percent in August of 2.7%, which is the fastest increase of grocery inflation in two years. Families with income under $25,000 perceive it to be higher at 24.8%.
[READ MORE: Consumer sentiment falls to four-month low on inflation, unemployment worries]
The study found that factors such as product availability, low prices, and attentive staff are increasingly important to U.S. shoppers. Recent changes in consumer needs since Wave 10 (May 28) include: 78% preferring an easy-to-shop website (up 2.1%), 67% seeking one-stop shopping (up 2%) and 71% prioritizing low base prices (up 1.8%).
Also, since the last study, 62% of consumers are shopping at stores with low base prices (up 2.3%), 40% shop online before buying and 40% shop around different stores to find the best value. There has also been a drop of 2.7% in consumers shopping for organic groceries (29%).
As a result of financial pressures, dollar stores experienced a 4% increase in growth during the past 12 months, the highest among all formats. Dollar stores now surpass discounters (-3%) and club (-1%), positioning the channel in third place in penetration, the same as in August 2023.
“Two years ago, during high inflation, we noted in Wave Four of the CTT, that many American families were struggling with food and financial pressures – particularly those with children and adults aged 18 to 44,” said Matt O’Grady, president of the Americas for Dunnhumby. “Unfortunately, we're now seeing similar concerning trends emerge again, and families are having to adjust their shopping habits and spending priorities as a result.”
AI
Dunnhumby’s report also shed light on how shoppers view artificial intelligence when it comes to their shopping habits.
- Only 23% of Americans trust AI, which is the lowest trust level across the Americas. Although the U.S. is a leader in AI development, levels of AI trust among consumers are highest in Latin American countries: 33% in Mexico, 34% in Colombia, 40% in Chile and 46% in Brazil.
- The top five most-appealing “high touch” AI use cases for U.S. consumers are personalized rewards and recommendations (51%), security (51%), forecasting, stock and waste management (45%), budgeting (45%) and health and diet goals (44%).
- The top five most appealing “high tech” AI use cases for U.S. consumers are virtual shopping assistants (43%), smart shelves/shelf-stacking robots (39%), ordering (such as voice activated) (39%), self-driving shopping carts (38%) and customer service chatbots (37%).
Dunnhumby interviewed 8,500 grocery shoppers across Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, and the U.S for Wave 11 of the CTT. The online interviews took place in August 2025. Approximately 1,000 to 2,000 individuals were interviewed in each of the six countries for the current wave of the study.
