According to business services provider Deloitte, value seeking has become a strategy consumers are using to cope with inflation and economic uncertainty – shifting to cooking at home as a tactic employed – with affluent individuals more prone than others to employ the approach, which suggests that some luxury shoppers may be trading down to mass-market brands.
Inflation, particularly, has influenced consumer perceptions about brands, as detailed in the Deloitte report The Value-Seeking Consumer: Competitors Could Lose Out to Brands Offering More than Low Prices. Faced with higher costs, consumers have been rethinking what constitutes a fair price and which products deliver the best value for the money. Based on the survey at the heart of the report, Deloitte described four in 10 Americans as value-seekers today.
Still, depending upon the case, between 10% and 40% of consumer brand value perceptions stem from factors other than price, Deloitte maintained. When consumers apply their sense of price/quality in their shopping, brands that provide extra value wind up with higher purchase intent and growing consumer share over time, Deloitte asserted.
In households with $200,000 a year or more in earnings, consumers plan to spend 50% to 60% less in many discretionary categories versus their peers, Deloitte pointed out. Consumer perceptions of good value and fair prices remain constrained by the impact of inflation, with the result that value-conscious behavior appears to be not only more widespread but also more deeply ingrained across demographics.
In its report, Deloitte noted that 65% of value-seeking consumers are cooking more meals at home to offset the effects of inflation. At the same time, 59% of value seekers are switching to store brands/private labels and 53% are purchasing cheaper ingredients from the grocery store, which is about 10 times the rate of non-value-seekers in each case.
Deloitte stated that its Value-seeking Behavior Index rose 10% since September 2024 to 110.8 in April 2025, including a 5% increase from March to April, driven in part by consumers cooking more at home and limiting grocery delivery. The Index subsequently dropped 6% in May, highlighting the current consumer uncertainty. It also may reflect consumers purchasing ahead of tariff-related price increases.
In demographic terms, 49% of Gen X and 43% of Boomers have adopted value-seeking behaviors, in contrast to 40% of Millennials and 44% of Gen Zers, a result that Deloitte characterized as undermining the idea that financial pressures contribute to younger generations becoming more value-driven than older consumers.
