Here’s what’s filling holiday shopping carts -and what Americans are cutting back on.
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:00:29 – Biggest Risks to Holiday Spending
00:01:32 – Technical Glitches vs. Affordability
00:02:39 – Seasonal Momentum & Consumer Strength
00:03:23 – What Consumers Are Buying (Groceries & Key Trends)
00:04:37 – The Mayo Trend Explained
00:05:07 – What Consumers Are Still Spending On vs. Cutting Back
00:08:31 – Message to Wall Street
00:10:25 – The State of the U.S. Consumer
Transcript:
Caroline Woods
Joining me now is Tsvetta Kaleynska, founder and CEO of Rila Global Consulting. Great to have you at the desk. Thanks so much for joining us.
Tsvetta Kaleynska
Thanks so much for having me.
Caroline Woods
So your company analyzed 11 million social posts over the last 30 days to figure out what Americans are buying and what essentially go wrong this holiday season. So let’s break it all down. I guess let’s start on the retail side. What are the biggest risks to holiday spending right now?
Tsvetta Kaleynska
So when I analyze consumers and digital conversations on social media, what I care about and what I want to see is how Main Street basically reacts to new products, new trends, sensations, or anything interesting that could impact Wall Street and the financial aspects and the earnings. When I analyzed the last month of discussions, when it comes to retail shopping, purchasing behavior, there were a few interesting things that I saw for retailers specifically, the one thing that we can mention to be very careful with, with the based on the data that we saw, is actually app and website glitches and abandoned shopping carts.
Tsvetta Kaleynska
So over and over, the discussions on social media showed us that a lot of the consumers are abandoning their shopping carts or moving to their shopping cart to another retailer because of app and website glitches. So that would be my number one thing, especially now going into the holidays.
Caroline Woods
So that’s interesting. So it’s technical glitches, not because they’re abandoning because they realize they can’t afford to pay for what’s in the shopping cart. Right.
Tsvetta Kaleynska
Yeah. Absolutely technical. And it goes really hand-in-hand with more of the operational side that we saw through the discussions on social media, what consumers are facing. So any time on the operational part of the website or their app does not work, the shopping cart basically gets abandoned or it gets moved to another retailer who can actually provide. The second interesting thing in addition to that was actually shipping, shipping speed and anything related to the deliverability of the products within the specific context or timeline that the customer is expecting.
Tsvetta Kaleynska
So there is a lot of that expectation, coupled with the technical aspect that these retailers have to watch out for.
Caroline Woods
So if they can’t get it soon enough, they’ll just switch retailers altogether.
Tsvetta Kaleynska
Well, not so much. So I’d say what consumers actually pointed out was, if you promise me that you will deliver it within that time window, you really better do it. Otherwise I will not order with you the next time around. So it wasn’t so much for any of the promises made. It was actually on the deliverability side of did you actually deliver it on time for me?
Caroline Woods
What are you seeing in terms of seasonal momentum and actually how strong the consumer is at this point?
Tsvetta Kaleynska
Well, I have to say that because of this most recent data that I analyzed, there was a lot there were a lot of mixed feelings that the consumer had. So again, we’re right now going into the holiday season. So there is a lot of optimism, a lot of excitement, and also a lot of shopping that’s going on. But at the same time, we are still in the inflation era of discussions that are happening in the US among U.S. consumers.
Tsvetta Kaleynska
So it’s very much like a mixed message that I saw a lot of momentum building up going into the holidays. But at the same time, also a lot of worry about discretionary spending and how much of that should actually be spent.
Caroline Woods
Okay, so let’s talk about the shopping that’s going on. What are consumers still buying? What are they holding back on? What are they cutting back on.
Tsvetta Kaleynska:
So the most out of those 11 million, the most talked about of course, products or items that consumers were buying and are currently buying mentioned was 52% of these 11 million discussions. Were groceries anything related to groceries? Here are interesting calls that I could make. Beef and poultry and anything related to protein. I think we all have heard the news over and over again.
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