Amid high inflation in the United States, which category on Amazon has the fastest price increase?

Stacker recently analyzed Amazon's historical price data to determine how inflation affects the prices of goods on the platform. The study analyzed the five household items that Americans most often buy through Amazon. All of the products are from Amazon's non-third-party sellers, but can help sellers further understand the dynamics of the US market.

The five categories are pet products, personal care products, household cleaning, household necessities, and health care products.

Pet Products

The study showed that the overall price increase for the most commonly purchased pet products on Amazon was much lower than the increase in health products and slightly lower than the price increase in cleaning supplies, possibly in part due to a small drop in cat food prices.

Currently, pet owners spend mostly on necessities such as pet food, which has seen sharp increases in price. The consumer price index for pet food has risen nearly 14% over the past year through September, compared with a 10.9% increase for human food over the same period.

Personal Care Products

Research shows that 20% of Americans are buying personal care products in bulk, and 50% of them are buying toilet paper in bulk. In addition, consumers are choosing to buy more in bulk and less in bulk.

Inflation has also made menstrual products more expensive. As of November 2022, the average unit price of tampons and sanitary pads was more than 10% higher than the same period last year. These price increases are compounded by the fact that some states do not exempt menstrual products from sales taxes — and do not allow them to be paid for with food stamps or other welfare program benefits.

Rising oil costs have pushed up the cost of many consumer products, from toothpaste to hand sanitizer. Toiletries have seen slightly higher price increases than pet supplies, but only half the rate of household staples and a third of the rate of health products.

Household cleaning products

According to federal data, the price of household cleaning products increased 11.5% between October 2021 and October 2022. As with other types of products, Americans are stockpiling household cleaning products in bulk to save money.

Overall, the price increase for household cleaning products was slightly more than half that of household essentials and slightly higher than the price increase for toiletries, with cleaning products using sustainable ingredients seeing even higher price increases.

Home Essentials

The price increases for household essentials far outpaced those for pets, toiletries and cleaning supplies, but were still lower than for health and wellness-related products.

Coffee is one of the must-have items in American households. In the first half of 2022, the cost of a cup of coffee was 7.6% higher on average than the previous year. This is partly due to inflation, but also due to weather. A cold snap in 2021 killed a third of Brazil's Arabica coffee bean crop.

However, the cost of coffee beans has fallen by 20% in recent weeks, which could mean lower coffee prices and greater savings for consumers.

Health Care

As with other industries, water scarcity, extreme weather, increased labor costs, labor shortages, port congestion, and surging freight rates are making health supplement products more expensive.

Prices for items related to health supplements increased more than any other category in this analysis, more than three times as much as pet supplies, and far more than the second-highest increase, household staples.

Editor✎ Ashley/

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