Everyone knows that grocery prices are higher, budgets are tighter and shoppers are frustrated. But it’s not just high prices that are causing that frustration.
Turns out it’s not necessarily the prices themselves, but the uncertainty about where those prices are headed next, that has shoppers feeling anxious when they walk into a grocery store.
As part of its State of Supply Chain Consumer Pulse Survey 2026, RELEX Solutions asked respondents to rank their top shopping frustrations. The results, they found, “challenge some widely held assumptions about where dissatisfaction sits.”
Shoppers named “prices changing too frequently” as their primary frustration. Shrinkflation, or products becoming smaller or of lesser quality, was second. And difficulty predicting one’s grocery bill was ranked third.
“Unpredictability, not the price level itself, is the primary driver of eroding consumer trust right now,” RELEX concluded. “Shoppers are reacting to what things cost, but they are also reacting to the fact that costs keep shifting, that product quality is inconsistent, and that their monthly grocery spend has become genuinely difficult to forecast.”
So shoppers are trying to take control, to the extent that they can. 61% said they’ve responded to higher prices by cutting back on what they purchase – buying fewer expensive products like beef, or fewer discretionary products like snacks or alcohol. 47% have switched to private label products to save money. 40% are shopping at discount grocers more often. And 38% are shopping around, visiting multiple stores to find the best prices.
And that’s setting off something of a spiral of unpredictability, as shoppers’ attempts to navigate uncertainty is causing uncertainty for retailers. 40% of the retailers that participated in a separate RELEX survey called fluctuation in shopper demand a “major disruption” that’s complicating their planning decisions, as they try to keep up with what shoppers still want and what they’re choosing to do without.
Manufacturers and retailers are also trying to navigate their own rising costs, protecting their profitability without alienating their customers. Nearly half of retailers and manufacturers said they’ve been forced to pass along their rising costs to consumers, with 43% of manufacturers saying they’re trying to keep prices stable by shrinking pack sizes.
But many shoppers aren’t happy with either of those options. 54% said the single most important action that retailers can take to help them manage rising costs, is to lower prices. So some retailers are trying to do just that. 47% of retailers said they’ve already increased promotions and discounts to try to prevent shoppers from straying.
And it’s working, to some extent, as more than half of shoppers said they look for sales and deals, and stock up when they find them.
So it appears we’re in something of an endless cycle. Retailers raise prices, shoppers reject them, so retailers lower prices again in the form of more promotions. But this cycle of raising regular prices, only to offer more promotional prices, is causing whiplash among shoppers, and contributing to the very uncertainty that they find most frustrating.
And that brings us back to the survey’s main finding – it’s not the high prices that are causing so much pain, it’s the instability and unpredictability, when you never really know how much a routine trip to the grocery store is going to cost you, or whether you’re going to have to settle for inferior products put out by cost-cutting manufacturers. And retailers risk losing customers for good if they don’t find a way to solve the problem.
“Consistency and predictability sit just beneath price in what builds long-term loyalty,” RELEX concluded. “Retailers focused only on the immediate affordability lever risk missing the structural trust problem that sits underneath it.”
So low prices are good. Consistent prices that build trust and loyalty are even better. And putting food on the table without feeling frustrated is what most shoppers believe would be best of all.
Image source: JeepersMedia 
