SPEND BEYOND HOLIDAY LEVELS

The rise of COVID-19 has been followed by an increase in consumer grocery and drugstore purchases, as consumers prepare to spend more time at home. The real inflection point was Thursday, March 12, 2020, when Americans increased their average household CPG spend by 55% compared to the prior Thursday, nearly doubling the number of items purchased.

This contributed to a spike in average weekly grocery spend per transaction in early March—surpassing spending levels during the weeks leading up to Christmas 2018 and 2019—and marketing a new stage of COVID-19-related buying behavior: Extreme Buying.