polygonchaingames| A report exposes the pressure on Americans 'lives: Consumption downgrades are widespread and increasingly prevalent.

FAP, May 10 (Editor Liu Rui) on Thursday, the marketing data analysis platform Adobe Analytics released a report saying that from January to April this year, online retail sales in the United States increased.PolygonchaingamesAbout 7%.

Although online retail in the US continues to grow, in this trend, more consumers tend to use the "buy and pay" (BNPL) platform to pay, while consumer demand for cheap alternatives is increasing.

All this shows that consumers are still under heavy pressure to spend in the context of persistently high inflation in the United States.

Buy first and pay later to promote the growth of US e-commerce sales

An Adobe Analytics survey of sales of major US online retail platforms found that total online spending in the US rose to $331.6 billion between January and April 2024, compared with $309.8 billion in the same period last year. According to the report, grocery expenditure increased the most, reaching 15%.Polygonchaingames.7%.

Adobe expects US online spending to exceed $500 billion in the first half of 2024, up 6.8 per cent from a year earlier.

The report also found that due to rising inflation in the United States, the pressure on the living expenses of American consumers continues unabated. As a result, many consumers, especially low-and middle-income consumers, are more likely to rely on credit cards and "buy later" (BNPL) means to maintain their lifestyle.

Adobe said spending on ecommerce driven by the BNPL platform reached a record $25.9 billion in the first four months of this year, up 11.8 per cent from the same period last year, as shoppers "adopted a more flexible way to manage their budgets".

Adobe also expects BNPL to push consumer electronics spending to $84.8 billion for all of 2024, an increase of about 13 per cent over last year. As a reference, this means that Americans will spend more on the BNPL platform in 2024 than the entire Panamanian economy will produce in 2023.

Some analysts warn that the "ghost debt" of "buy and pay later" is an underunderstood problem for the economy. They believe that BNPL may mask the pain that many low-and middle-income consumers feel as a result of inflation, or it may bring financial risks to individual consumers.

Americans are also experiencing a decline in consumption.

Discretionary consumer spending has been the focus of attention over the past few months. As US inflation slows and prices remain high, all types of shoppers are forced to spend less and buy more affordable products.

In categories such as household goods and personal care, the cheapest products accounted for an increase in overall consumption in the first four months of this year, while the share of the most expensive products declined, according to Adobe, suggesting that consumers are more inclined to opt for cheaper alternatives.

For example, the share of the cheapest products in household goods consumption rose from 36 per cent in January 2019 to 48 per cent in April 2024.

In fact, the phenomenon of such consumption degradation exists not only online, but also offline.

As consumer interest in expensive products wanes, large US retailers, including Wal-Mart and Target, have made conservative forecasts for this year's results and have been more aggressive in introducing affordable private-label food at less than $5.

Vivek Pandya, chief insight analyst at Adobe, said: "We are seeing consumers spend less and spend more on the cheapest goods, which helps keep all types of goods resilient and see continued spending, but it also shows that consumers are facing higher inflationary pressures on housing, natural gas and food."