nursery matters JOHN BARKER
Barking Mad Pramland’s John Barker is taking an overview this month of customer buying behaviour while we all ride the storm of a cost of living crisis.
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ell, there goes another month and yet more strangeness is afoot at Pramland towers! August continued the way July left off with peaks so high you end up with snow on your head (at last my balding dome has something on top of it) and troughs so low I was a risk of disturbing a Balrog (a little Lord Of The Rings reference there for those of you also excited about the new show coming soon!). I like to think of myself as a positive person but the past couple of months have really tested that. I really don’t like the expression “cost of living crisis” and I have a fair few reasons for this. Firstly, and I may be wrong with this, and you may very well disagree with me completely here but to the average person on the street so far we’ve all been hit by a rise in food and petrol prices. Petrol has been around £1.90 per litre but is falling again (the nearest petrol station to me charges £173.7 per litre – that never makes the news does it?) and food has got more expensive. On what was your average £100 weekly shop one can now expect to pay £110 or maybe £115?
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Savvy shoppers could always shop own brand instead of branded on certain items and that would invariably get us back in the ballpark of the original amount. How could I forget Gas and Electric? That’s right they’ve shot up - almost as fast as how quick we all turned our heating off weeks ago once the better weather arrived. Just like we only have to turn the living room lights on at 9:30pm thanks to the long evenings. Energy prices will increase, we all know this but for the vast majority of households they haven’t changed yet! My point being that in real terms your average family is currently spending £20 per week extra on petrol and £10 to £15 extra per week on food. Now call me cynical but if your average household is living so close to their income that they cannot live with an extra £30 - £35 per week coming out of their pockets they’ve really not thought long and hard about their household spending. Where am I going with this? Well, it all comes down to the conversation I’ve been having in the store with customers (to be). The vast majority of them are either delaying ordering and therefore
john@pramland.co.uk Image source Pexels.com
