Consumer Confidence in the UK hits a new record low
Here at TUSK Digital, we think its important to keep our customers up to date with the latest consumer and economic news, as we understand how much these factors can impact your business.
The GfK’s Consumer Confidence Barometer is a consumer research project, which has been reporting monthly since 1974. They provide a snapshot of consumer views on their finances, economic issues and outlook for the next 12 months.
Why is this important for your business? It is important that you are abreast of current and emerging consumer behaviour so that you can plan your business activity around the trends. For example, knowing whether consumers are in a spend or save mindset means that you can adapt your marketing messaging and pricing to suit.
So what are the recent results indicating?
The GfK Consumer Confidence indicator fell to -41 in June 2022, from -40 in May, setting a record low for the second consecutive month.
According to Joe Staton, GfK client strategy director – “This means consumer confidence is now weaker than in the darkest days of the global banking crisis, the impact of Brexit on the economy, or the Covid shutdown.”
The sharpest fall in the confidence index was recorded in consumers’ short-term outlook about their personal finances. Putting that into context, we are likely to see a sharp pullback in consumer spending in the short-term.
Unfortunately, the longer-term outlook is not much brighter. With UK annual inflation reaching a four-decade high of 9.1% in May and the country’s economy also contracting we are racing towards a strong likelihood of a recession later this year.
None of this is positive in terms of encouraging consumers to spend, and you simply cannot make consumers spend money they do not have.
However, as a digital marketing agency, it is important that we help our customers to understand economic trends so that we can recommend small changes you can make to your marketing activity and consumer messaging to adapt to the market.
Our recommendations will vary from company to company but will involve considering your overall targeting, strategy and messaging. For example, is it best to adopt low price messaging and compete on cost (offers, bundles and price comparison) or is it more suitable to take a premium approach to your brand and target ABC1’s, who might not be feeling the pinch as drastically (“improve don’t move”, “holiday at home” etc)?
We can’t change the market, but we can subtly impact consumer behaviour by making sure you are advertising to the right people, with the right messaging.
At TUSK digital, we consider ourselves an extension of your business and we believe that size should never be a barrier to accessing specialist marketing know-how.
Fill out our contact form for a free, no-obligation consultation.
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