How Consumers Are Reacting to Increasing Prices and Supply Issues

Price surprise jumped up in February across most goods and services

Since tracking began in mid-2022, Morning Consult’s price surprise index has been trending downwards, reaching a series low when excluding housing in January 2025. However, in February, price surprise ticked up considerably, driven by a broad range of goods and services.

Generally, the price surprise index tends to be negative since consumers usually have a sense of the costs of goods and services and are therefore less likely to report prices as “higher than expected”. Consequently, a month-over-month increase or decrease in the index reflects consumers' perception of a corresponding price change. 

Groceries had the largest increase in its price surprise score, reaching a positive level – a positive price surprise index indicates that among those who completed a purchase, a larger share of consumers said the good/service was at a higher-than-expected price than not. The grocery price surprise index increase is likely due to egg prices, which are a significant driver in recent upward pressures in grocery inflation. Due to egg shortages as a result of an avian flu outbreak, prices for a dozen eggs reached a historic high of $4.95 a dozen in January of this year, according to the most recent government data. The average cost for a dozen is likely to have been even higher in February, as other non-government data sources estimated that costs reached upwards of $8 a dozen in recent weeks. This has clearly made an impression on the minds of consumers, with more respondents than not noting they completed a grocery purchase with a higher-than-expected price.

Although groceries had the largest month-over-month increase, price surprise scores moved upward for most goods and services tracked by Morning Consult. Gas prices, which trended upwards in January and through most of February, were also noticed by consumers with the second largest month-over-month gain in price surprise. Other categories with notable increases in February were restaurants, alcohol, among most other goods and services. Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, has been increasing somewhat steadily since its low in September 2024. If the price surprise index rises further, it could be indicative of future price pressures to come.

Price sensitivity ticked down slightly in February but is still near a series-high

Morning Consult’s Price Sensitivity index, which measures the prevalence of prospective buyers declining to purchase goods and services due to higher-than-expected prices, decreased in February. Groceries and gas were two of the largest categories with declines following their January reductions. Increasing gas and grocery prices (again primarily due to eggs) are harder to walk away from due to the essential nature of the purchase. So, when a greater share of consumers are surprised by the price, many follow through with the purchase anyway.

Despite some easing in February, price sensitivity index scores have trended upwards as the cost of living has risen at an elevated pace since tracking began in early 2022. In fact, last month, the index reached a series high, implying that consumers are much less likely to follow through with purchases when the price is higher than expected than they were in the past few years. Inflation has reheated in recent months, up to 3.0% year-over-year as measured by CPI, and faces more upside risks from newly implemented and future tariffs and other percolating supply chain pressures.

Supply chain indexes continue to heat and could worsen further with tariffs, threatening future inflationary pressures

All three of Morning Consult’s supply chain indexes ticked up in February. Increases in the unavailability index, which measures the net share of consumers who did not purchase a product because it was unavailable, were modest but broad-based across categories. The unavailability index remains quite negative, which implies a much greater share of respondents did purchase a product rather than not due to stockouts. 

The purchasing difficulty index is similar to the unavailability index but slightly different – purchasing difficulty measures the net share of consumers who reported difficulty finding an item. The increase in purchasing difficulty was much more pronounced than the decrease in unavailability. Still, it was driven mainly by groceries (likely eggs once again) and not broad-based across categories. Groceries had a positive purchasing difficulty score in February for the first time since March 2023, meaning a greater share of consumers reported having difficulty finding some of their groceries than not.

Finally, the delivery delays index also increased in February. The index has been slowly reheating for nearly a year, reaching a positive score last month—a positive delivery delays score means that a greater share of consumers reported deliveries were slower compared to the previous month than they were faster. While the index remains well below its historical high from mid-2022, its February value was the highest reading since January 2023.

Not only does this consumer-based supply chain measure pick up a tightening signal on deliveries, but businesses seem to be registering a need for adding more workers as well: The annual pace of hiring growth for transportation and warehousing services has closely mirrored the path of the Delivery Delays index on a rolling 3-month average (the measures have a historical correlation coefficient of .84).

The delivery delays index captures the “last-mile” of the supply chain pressure, potentially capturing any supply chain disturbances upstream, so the steady increase in this index indicates some sort of growing supply chain disturbances, even before the tariffs. With newly implemented tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada, and potentially more to come in April, already strained supply chains could become further overwhelmed as businesses and manufacturers may need to find new suppliers to avoid new costs. Keeping supply as it is would ultimately lead to pass-through costs for consumers. Both would lead to higher prices.