Kirana store trends during Ganesh Chaturthi, Onam and Navroz in Covid-19 era

Navroz (Parzi New Year) | Ganesh Chathurthi | Onam

Covid-19 era has changed the way consumers purchased their groceries in the following ways: (a) what they bought (product mix), how they bought (frequency of purchases/visits, size of each purchase) and from whom they bought (online/offline).

We decided to decode the spending patterns of the consumers during three recent major festivals – Navroz (Parzi New Year), Ganesh Chathurthi and Onam and how Covid-19 has changed the buying behaviour at kirana stores during these festivals. We looked at the billing data across our network of stores (Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai) for the following periods

  • Navroz (Parzi New Year)
    1. Pre-Covid-19 era: 17th August 2019
    2. Covid-19 era: 16th August 2020
  • Ganesh Chathurthi:
    1. Pre-Covid-19 era: 2nd September 2019
    2. Covid-19 era: 22nd August 2020
  • Onam
    1. Pre-Covid-19 era: 11th September 2019
    2. Covid-19 era: 31st August 2020

Navroz during Covid-19

    • Grooming items and Floor cleaners were less priority for the consumers this year. This is possibly because of the lack of festival meet-ups with family/friends at home.
    • Due to lack of celebrations, consumers have also lowered their spends on food items such as packaged water, milk, sweets, confectionary and nuts
    • Consumer spend more on ghee this year than on Vanaspati which is otherwise used for preparing food items in bulk during celebrations

 

Ganesh Chathurthi during Covid-19

  • There appears to have been a shift towards home preparation “Modak” and other sweets as the consumer spend more on rice flour, oil, and ghee
  • What’s more interesting is that we also saw an increase in spending on utensil cleaners which indicated more cooking/washing at home and less of going out
  • Consumers made certain trade-offs where they have spent more on sweets/mithais than on dry fruit and nuts.
  • Grooming items and Floor cleaners were less priority for the consumers this year. This could be because of the lack of festival meet-ups with family/friends at home (This is supported also by the fact that there was lowered spend on coffee, orange/lime/lemon cold drinks, and packaged water.

 

Onam during Covid-19

  • Grooming items and Floor cleaners were less priority for the consumers this year. This is possibly because of the lack of festival meet-ups with family/friends at home.
  • We also saw an increase in spending on utensil cleaners which indicated more cooking/washing at home and less of going out
  • Vanaspati (which is normally used for bulk cooking) was not preferred this year and gave way for ghee
  • As there were no/lesser home meet-ups this year, there was lesser consumer spending on biscuits, dry fruits & nuts, milk, and coffee.

We have been closely monitoring basket-level data on SKU’s/ brands/ categories from kirana stores and sharing these insights with brands. If there are any categories or brands you would like us to deep-dive into, please write to us at vinay.s@snapbizz.com and we will be happy to share them with you.