18/02/2026
Inflation numbers are slowing. Behavioral shifts in your customer base are not.
Most business owners track the headline rate. Few are tracking what it's doing to the purchasing logic of their actual customers.
Here's what the regional data reveals when you look closer:
Two-thirds of food and beverage categories recorded fewer active buyers during the inflation wave. Those who continued buying reduced their quantities. Even spending on essentials like sugar, salt, and flour declined — suggesting pressure had reached well beyond discretionary categories.
At the same time, businesses responded with tactics that rarely appear on price lists:
🔵 Shrinkflation — Packaging stays the same. Net weight quietly drops. The price per unit rises without the shelf price changing.
🔵 Skimpflation — Quality decreases while the nominal price holds. Less cocoa in chocolate. Fewer services bundled in standard packages. The consumer gets less — gradually, invisibly.
🔵 Cheapflation — Customers who switched to budget options to save money discovered those options increased in price by around 40%, compared to 35% for premium alternatives. The escape route became the more expensive route.
🔵 Greedflation — Serbia's largest retail chains grew profit margins by 36% between 2019 and 2022, according to NBS analysis. Inflation as cover for margin expansion is a documented phenomenon, not a theory.
The business design lesson here is straightforward: when purchasing power contracts, customers don't just spend less — they recalibrate trust, loyalty, and perceived value across every brand they interact with.
The companies that come out of inflationary periods stronger are those that treated this as a strategic design problem, not just a cost management exercise.
Read the full analysis: https://skenderovic.biz/how-are-consumers-changing-behavior-due-to-inflation/
Inflation variations: cheapflation, greedflation, and shrinkflation. What tactics are companies using to maintain profitability?