D. Tighe
Research expert covering consumer behavior, sporting goods retail, and the global toy industry.
One of life’s unfortunate inevitabilities is the fact that life gets more expensive with time. A common way to measure how average prices for products and services go up over the course of several years is through the use of the consumer price index or CPI. The consumer price index measures the monthly or yearly change in prices by comparing what consumers pay for a weighted-average basket of goods in the current year, compared to an earlier base year that is set to the value of 100. In 2022, nondurable goods, excluding food and beverages (e.g., clothing and personal care products), reached a consumer price index of roughly 234 points, based on the base year of 1982-84. In other words, nondurables (minus food and beverages) have more than doubled in average cost for the U.S. consumer since the early eighties.
What goods have been impacted by inflation?
As a result of several issues, including the Russia-Ukraine war and the aftermath of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, a significant spike in inflation was recorded across the globe in 2022. And although most, if not all, goods and services get more costly over time either way, some product categories suffer more than others at times like these. In the United States, the CPI of personal care items jumped by approximately six points from 2020 to 2022 (with 1982-84 as the base year). At the same time, average American prices for furniture and bedding items jumped by approximately 24 index points within the same two-year time frame.Walmart and Target
Walmart and Target are some of the world’s largest retail companies in terms of sales, and both enterprises have seen their average prices for consumer goods increase visibly between 2021 and 2022. In U.S. Walmart stores, for instance, prices for clothing products increased by roughly three and a half to four percent every single month in the first half of 2022, before slowing down somewhat in September of that year. Comparatively, Target’s month-on-month price changes for apparel fluctuated more heavily, from two to almost five percent, during the same period.
