The tradeoff economy: Why stressed shoppers are still spending

For this week's Modern Retail Podcast, co-hosts Gabriela Barkho and Melissa Daniels were joined by Katie Thomas from the Kearney Consumer Institute to discuss how shoppers' financial stress is showing up in their shopping habits. KCI recently released its latest Consumer Stress Index, which monitors 24,000 consumers across 12 countries. It looks not only at consumers' financial picture but also at their stress related to geopolitics and government, innovation and technology, food and the environment, and health and education. What's different this year is that it's not just one factor causing consumers to feel stressed. It's the compounding effect of inflation, geopolitical instability and overall uncertainties. "Put these two analyses together — historic stress levels and a population that feels starved of joy — and you get a consumer landscape that continues to defy the standard recessionary playbook," the report said.