Pascale Hébel, director of the consumption pole at the Research Center for the Study and Observation of Living Conditions (Crédoc), discusses the attitudes of the French towards prices, which are difficult to reconcile with the desire to change the consumption model. .
Where is the price sensitivity of French consumers?
We see this purchasing criterion going up very strongly. During our survey of consumer trends for July 2020, this was not a subject, health and safety guarantees were the top priority of the French. Now, these two elements are on an equal footing. Price sensitivity, which is highly correlated with the economic context, generally comes back to first position when purchasing power falls. We were not in this scenario in 2020, but households anticipate business bankruptcies and rising unemployment as soon as government support ends, they are anxious.
Another factor may have played a role: households spent a lot on their food in 2020. The weight of this item in their spending had never been so high since the 1960s. We have often turned to products from SMEs and short circuits, therefore a little more expensive. The French do not want, now, to continue spending more in this area, so they will proceed to arbitration.
Hasn’t the relation to prices also evolved more profoundly?
Half of French people pay close attention to and compare prices, a proportion that hardly varies over time. Two types of behavior emerge. There are first of all those who are called at Crédoc “low-cost hunters”: they are often people in financial difficulty or families who need to limit their expenses to settle and generally frequent the circuits. discount. But there is also a category made up of “smart experts” who do not see why to pay more for equal quality. Fifteen years ago, this behavior was mainly the result of young men who had acquired the reflex to compare prices on the Web. These strategies are installed and generalized, and the rise of shopping on the Internet accentuates the phenomenon.
Aren’t most people torn between wanting to do a good business and doing a good deed?
Many French people make an effort to consume differently, but not everyone or not all of the time. Consumption is increasingly fragmented. Among those who say they want to buy less and better, there is, for example, a share of facade commitment. Some of the urban over-graduates have only one desire: to let go of air travel as soon as possible.
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