As eCommerce shopping rates are on the rise, experts note that mass merchandisers that capitalize on strategic product placement, variety, and ease of locating and purchasing product will come out on top. 

Beverage Industry provides an in-depth look into the performances and trends in the alcohol and non-alcohol categories within the last year.

Chicago-based Information Resources Inc. (IRI) announced the launch of the IRI CPG Inflation Tracker on its free, online COVID-19 Data Dashboard. The new tool provides a standard metric for tracking weekly price-per-unit changes for consumer packaged goods compared with the year-ago period across departments, including fixed and random weight products, grocery aisles and retail formats.

For the United States, sales trends remain slightly elevated as total store sales are up 4.1 percent, according to IRI data. Total non-edible sale are relatively flat (up 0.8 percent), while total edible sales are up 5.1 percent.

New results released today by the Consumer Brands Association, Arlington, Va., show that in the survey’s eighth week, Americans have settled into pandemic life, feeling less concerned about the coronavirus but believing that the government will move to reopen the country sooner than it should.

IRI updated the report “Consumer Spending Tracker: COVID-19 Impact” to capture the most recent insights. The most recent report sources sales data from the IRI POS Data ending April 12. For the United States, sales trends remain elevated but are down significantly from its peak. Total store sales were up 14.3 percent for that time period. For edible, sales were up 18.8 percent; however, for the week timeframe, non-edible sales were down 0.8 percent.

Across geographies, consumer demand appears to be beginning to stabilize toward previous year trends, although in some categories demand is significantly higher or lower than the previous year, according to recent information from Information Resources Inc. (IRI), Chicago.