There has been much speculation in the past few weeks about how consumers will react to rising fuel and grocery prices. On June 24th, we’ll host a Webinar to shine a light on pricing sensitivity from the consumer perspective. Leveraging our BuzzMetrics data, we’ll present data from our research of unprompted and unfiltered conversations to reveal how consumers are coping with rising prices.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been analyzing online conversations (buzz) to try to understand how consumers may be altering their behaviors. Are they making fewer shopping trips? Buying more store-branded products? Is coupon use increasing? What’s compelling about this particular recessionary period is the extent to which consumers are leveraging social media to find solutions, ask questions and share ideas.

Online Buzz Growing

As we look at buzz over the past few months, we see online discussions about grocery prices, in particular, rise significantly in the first few weeks of 2008. While the post-holiday season is usually a time when consumers begin tightening their belts, the sentiments expressed during this time period express a sense of foreboding and anticipation.

Trended Buzz Volume for Gas Prices, Grocery Prices and Private Label Goods

Note: Buzz is expressed as an index of total online discussion from November 25, 2007 to May 18, 2008.

Do Rising Prices Lead to Private-Label Growth?

As we learned from the data above, buzz for private labels and store brands remains remarkably unchanged in recent months. It is important to note that in unprompted discussion, consumers infrequently discuss store brands generically, but will identify a brand by retailer, such as the “Aldi Fit & Active hot pocket brand,” for example. This obscures the rise in private growth that is ringing up at the register.

When we look specifically at private label buzz linked to milk, eggs and bread, we see a different story emerge. Buzz increases moderately in recent weeks for all three categories. This is consistent with recently reported sales trends, which reveal over half (52.7%) of sales growth for private label products were driven by milk, fresh eggs, cheese and breads and baked goods for the period ending March 29, 2008.

Private Label Buzz for Key Commodities

This is just a sampling of the data we will present during our Webinar on June 24^th. We will also present data on how rising fuel prices are changing buying and lifestyle decisions for millions of consumers—and how marketers can proactively respond to consumer sensitivities now.