Youth have downsized on their shopping and turned away from these popular retailers

The country’s youth have ditched popular retailers such as Shoprite for wholesalers like Boxer, but the number of Woolworths' young consumers continues to grow year-on- year.

Research has found that the shopping basket of an average youth in South Africa is the cheapest compared with other age groups, and they have turned away from popular retailers to wholesalers and bulk purchasing.

Retail data from the Maholla Consumer Report found that the youth basket sizes at Shoprite and Pick ‘n Pay have seen a significant decrease, with a basket from Shoprite decreasing by 22.84% year on year. Clicks has also seen a downsizing of 10.76%, Maholla CEO Adam Reilly said.

The data found that the overall basket size of a consumer aged between 18 and 35 is valued at an average of R212.68 per basket. This is followed by those aged above 50 whose basket costs R218.49.

The highest is those aged between 35 and 49, spending on average R221.30.

Maholla, a retail rewards app, gathered the data through the collection of more than half a million receipts from consumers between May 2022 and May 2023.

“While traditional retailers have seen a marked contraction in basket sizes, Boxer and Game have seen an uptick, indicating a concerted effort by consumers to insulate themselves against inflation and rising food prices by purchasing their goods at wholesale prices” CEO Adam Reilly said.

Other luxury retailers including clothing store Foschini have also seen a decrease in youth basket sizes.

But the rate of Woolworths' youth consumers has increased by 11.45% year on year.

“This tells us that there are those in the youth category that enjoy a slightly higher disposable income, and are therefore not as price sensitive to inflation as those flocking to wholesalers to bring their monthly food costs down to a reasonable level,” Reilly said.

On the downside, the data shows that households which depend on the youth have smaller baskets than pensioners. The data showed that the basket of the youth in Limpopo dropped the most by 15.78%, the Free State by 14.35%, and KZN by 13.23% during the studied period.

“One correlation is evident across all retailers — the number of items in the basket are decreasing. Between May 2022 and May 2023, the number of items in the youth basket decreased by 6%.”

The data was collated from more than 2,000 retailers using information provided by over 512,000 receipts for 2.38m items sold over the year.

TimesLIVE