When there is a recession on the economy contracts and consequently more people find themselves out of work and struggling to make ends meet. Everybody is looking to make savings in any way they can, cutting back on unnecessary luxury items as well as trying to reduce the amount of money they spend on essential goods. Grocery shopping is something that no-one can avoid doing, but because people have less money to spend they are having to wise up about the way they shop and the products they buy.
Consequently, brand loyalty and loyalty to a particular supermarket has gone out of the window for most people. Before the recession, individuals may have been prepared to spend their money on more expensive brands because they believed them to be better quality and they had more money to throw around. This changed as soon as the recession hit, though, when people started to realise that bread, milk, butter, and baked beans are pretty much the same whatever packaging they come in.
Likewise, people have started to become less picky about the supermarket they shop in, abandoning classier, more expensive stores such as Waitrose in order to do their grocery shopping in stores such as Lidl and Aldi. People are less interested in how items are wrapped up and whether they possess a brand name or not, and more concerned about getting value for money, paying less money for more product.
This has led virtually all supermarkets to introduce their own value range, in order to try to entice customers back. People are no longer prepared to put up with spending exorbitant sums of money on items that get used everyday and need replacing on a regular basis. They are more likely to buy products in greater quantities and store them in the freezer and to make the most of special offers on items that they use a lot of than they perhaps were in the past. There may be some items that they will always spend more money on, such as chocolate, but in the main people are looking for cheaper alternatives to the usual products they buy.
Maybe this situation will change once the recession begins to ease off, but it would appear that people have started to get into the habit of being more frugal when it comes to their grocery shopping, aware that there are more important things to spend their money on than simply spending a fortune on brand names. More people have come to the conclusion that when they were spending so much money on their groceries, it was really the packaging they were paying for, and that the quality of products actually varies very little.