Price Surprise on The Rise Thanks to Goods (and Maybe Tariffs)

Morning Consult’s Price Surprise Index, excluding housing, has been trending upward since April, tracking a gradual reheating in inflation. This suggests that a growing share of consumers are noticing prices that are higher than expected, rather than simply above or at expectations. The Price Surprise Index measures the net share of consumers reporting higher-than-expected prices on recent purchases, benchmarked to September 2024 (when the Fed’s preferred inflation measure was last near the 2% target). Higher index scores indicate more adults are noticing price increases.

Price surprise has risen across most goods and services. However, similar to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), goods have been the main driver of the overall increase in price surprise. This is likely due in part to newly enacted tariffs and a more rapid escalation of inflation for goods in recent months. In fact, price surprise for goods (excluding more volatile food and energy categories) reached a positive score in September, the first time since mid 2024, implying that prices are heating up beyond normal expectations.

Examining price surprise for goods categories between April and September 2025 reveals notable shifts both in terms of both direction and magnitude. Electronics, exercise equipment, furniture, home appliances, and home repair supplies all moved from negative scores in April to solidly positive surprises by September, reflecting a broad-based trend of costs exceeding expectations in these categories as the months progressed. 

Alcohol, clothing, paper goods, and groceries all started with strongly negative surprises but each category saw a substantial move toward zero, meaning that prices became less surprisingly low, though they remained below expectations.

New and used vehicles were the only categories that saw downward movement. Price surprise indexes for larger ticket items like vehicles can often lag behind more frequently purchased items: Because these categories are purchased less frequently, it can take a longer time for price changes to be noticed by a large share of consumers. Year-over-year inflation has increased for new and used vehicles in recent months, so we could see these price surprise scores increase going forward. 

The above scatterplot illustrates how both price surprise and price sensitivity have shifted across categories from April to September. As a reminder, Morning Consult’s Price Sensitivity index measures sticker shock: A higher price sensitivity score indicates a larger share of consumers are walking away rather than completing the purchase when the prices are higher-than-expected. 

Categories in the bottom right quadrant, such as paper goods, appliances and furniture, experienced an increase in price surprise but a decrease in price sensitivity. This indicates that while prices are more surprisingly high, consumers are less likely to abandon purchases, signaling strengthening demand: consumers are increasingly willing to pay even when prices exceed expectations. The furniture category stands out with both a large increase in price surprise and a large decrease in price sensitivity, suggesting outsized demand for this category. 

In contrast, categories in the upper right quadrant—groceries, alcohol and clothing—saw increases in both price surprise and price sensitivity. Here, more consumers are both increasingly surprised by prices and decreasingly likely to buy when faced with higher-than-expected costs, indicating weakening demand or greater price resistance.

Finally, categories such as electronics, exercise equipment, and home repair supplies experienced large increases in price surprise, but minimal changes in their price sensitivity scores, suggesting little change in demand for these goods. New and used vehicles stood alone as categories with diminished price surprise, but trends in consumer demand differs between them – price sensitivity decreased substantially for used cars but increased for new cars, suggesting a growing share of adults were willing to deal with unexpectedly high prices for used cars but more likely to be sticker shocked by new cars.

Going forward, keep an eye on Price Surprise and Sensitivity to understand consumer behavior

Looking ahead, upward pressure on goods prices could continue as more tariffs go into effect and appear increasingly likely to stay in place for the medium term, potentially leading to even greater price surprise among consumers. Since goods inflation can sometimes spill over into services (for example, increased food prices could eventually lead to increased restaurant prices), we may see broader impacts on overall inflation in the future. Monitoring both price sensitivity and price surprise will be crucial for understanding how consumers are noticing and responding to higher prices. These indicators will help us track not only where inflation is most acute, but also how it may influence consumer behavior and demand across different categories as economic conditions evolve.