At our first Insights Event of 2023 our keynote speaker, Austin Hughes, one of Ireland's leading Economists, discussed the impact of the current economic landscape on consumer confidence and behaviours. Austin was joined by Charlie Weston, Personal Finance Editor, Irish Independent, Marija Grishin, Assistant Professor of Marketing, UCD and Luke Reaper, Managing Director, B&A.  The session focused on how marketers should be thinking about their pricing and the employment of pricing models, to support their overall Marketing strategy in today's climate. Speaker Presentations can be downloaded above.

Here are the KEY TAKE OUTS from the session:

• Brand reputation and trust are increasingly important to consumers.
• Consumers are alert to changing prices, promotions and pack size – they are looking out  for real value and are decoding inauthentic marketing  as reasons to mistrust brands.
• Transparency and openness calls for increased communication with consumers including reasons for price increases.
• Many people feel there is a lack of empathy from companies that are rapidly rising prices but failing to pass on any drops they are seeing in input costs. Marketing people need to explain, explain, explain why prices are rising.
• Each choice, each price point and each cost-of-living trade-off is increasingly a more considered act.
• Know your customer segments and their corresponding behaviours in each core category of purchase – price and market according to category of purchase and shopper typology.
• Irish consumer spending is still showing a positive trend  - much stronger than most economies because of robust job growth and fiscal supports.
• Consumers scarred and scared but surviving…possibly better than feared - Most domestic economic news is still positive.