Dollar and discount stores were already surging in popularity over the past few years, but they may have yet to reach their peak. According to a recent study from the American Journal of Public Health, dollar stores are now considered the fastest-growing food retailers in the U.S. Although the study raised nutritional concerns associated with this trend, it tracks with CivicScience’s most recent data about shoppers cutting back on household staples due to high prices at the grocery store.
CivicScience polled Americans last year about their grocery buying habits at dollar and discount stores and wanted to revisit the data to see how consumer habits have shifted. According to the latest data, U.S. adults are currently relying on Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar stores less for groceries than they were back in September. Fewer consumers currently claim to shop once a week or more or several times per month at these stores for groceries – and those claiming to rarely or never shop at these stores have slightly risen since September.
But perhaps counterintuitively, U.S. adults reporting in the last six months to be financially better off compared to before the pandemic are more than twice as likely as the Gen Pop to shop for groceries at dollar stores once a week or more. Consumers doing worse off than before the pandemic are much more likely to be infrequent dollar store grocery shoppers, but frequent them at a higher rate overall than Americans in the same place financially.
Last week, CivicScience polled U.S. adults to gauge how their egg-buying habits have changed in light of the recently skyrocketing prices, and it turns out there’s a correlation between Americans cutting back on eggs and a heightened reliance on dollar stores for grocery shopping. More than two-thirds of U.S. adults who shop at dollar stores for groceries once a week or more are eating eggs less often or stopped eating them altogether. More than half of consumers who shop at these stores several times per month are in the same boat, and those who rarely or never grocery shop at dollar stores are the least likely to have changed their egg habits.
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