Bachelors Skipping Cleaning Supplies on Grocery Trips

Catalina has been tracking the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on buying behavior at grocery and drug stores dating back to mid-January, and its latest findings discovered unique shopping trends for one demographic in particular.

"Our retail and CPG customers find such data and insights into various demographic segments to be incredibly beneficial as we work with them on hyper-personalizing their marketing efforts," said Marta Cyhan, Catalina's chief marketing officer. "That is why we continue to track sales data across 78 major grocery and drug categories dating back to mid-January just before the pandemic really started to take root."

Single male households are choosing more carbohydrate-packed food than cleaning supplies on their shopping trips, according to Catalina's Buyer Intelligence Database.

For the 17-week period ended July 15, cleaning supply sales were still high: disinfectants up 120%, bathroom cleaner up 139%, oven cleaner up 117%, all-purpose cleaner up 113% and dishwashing liquid up 132%. In every single one of these categories for single male households, however, sales decreased anywhere from 1% to 22%.

What are single male households buying then? Catalina found easy-to-fix carbohydrate-rich foods saw huge increases over a year ago. Potato mixes were up 326%, instant rice was up 306%, pancake mixes were up 182% and dried pasta was up 104% for single male households over the same period last year.

Catalina has also launched an interactive map to help highlight shopping behavior and sales impacts in response to COVID-19 that it updates weekly.