One of the more popular themes across recent diligence requests is to understand how resilient consumer spending would be in particular sectors/categories in the event of a recession. When you frame the question negatively and plant notions of a recession or job loss in the minds of respondents, there is a tendency for them to be heavy handed in communicating if/how they will cut spending. We took a different approach for these questions by using their responses to create a hierarchy of nice-to-have vs. need-to-have spending categories and gauging how much pain they would feel if they lost access to a category. This data has all-weather utility and could give you a clue of where consumers would cut first in the event of financial distress. Open Report:Bespoke – Consumer Need-To-Have’sTakeaways:
- Streaming video performed really well in this survey as a category, and thus, would likely be recession resilient relative to other categories. Buying new footwear/clothing, travel /vacation, and video games also ranked near the top.
- The categories in our survey furthest toward the end of the “nice to have” spectrum among users include concerts, sporting events, satellite radio, ride hailing apps, food delivery apps, and online dating platforms.
