Youth prefer Boxer to Shoprite, but Woolies remains a favourite

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 baskets of average young people in SA are 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 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 report shows that the basket value of a consumer aged 18-35 is an average of R212.68. This is followed by those aged above 50 whose basket costs R218.49. The highest is those aged 35-49, 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 from May 2022 to 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” 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 showed that households which depend on young people have smaller baskets than those of pensioners. The basket of a young person in Limpopo dropped the most by 15.78%, the Free State by 14.35% and KwaZulu-Natal 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 2.38-million items sold over the year.