August 10, 2026
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If 85% of US Consumers Believe Brands Are Using Inflation as a Scapegoat For Price Hikes, What Can Be Done To Restore Trust?
Consumers are getting quite fed up with governments, retailers, and brands, if the latest Omnisend data is to be believed. According to recent survey results, a massive majority (85%) of American shoppers believe that brands and retailers “often use inflation as an excuse to raise prices more than necessary.” Further, two-thirds (67%) of respondents indicated that price hikes have altered their feelings towards once-preferred brands, and just over half (56%) indicated they’d halted purchases from brands in this basket.
On the other hand, American consumers are showing some degree of tolerance for certain price hikes — more particularly, those enacted with concrete results in terms of better product quality (19%), improved wages for employees (16%), and acceptance of increasing ingredient or material costs (15%).
“Consumers understand that costs change, but they want those changes to make sense. Shrinkflation creates the opposite impression: that a company is hoping customers will pay the same and notice less. In many cases, it can definitely feel like an insult. When households are already watching every dollar they spend, transparency around price increases matters more than ever,” said Marty Bauer, ecommerce expert for Omnisend, via the survey results.
Other notable data points presented by the survey results:
- Grocery is a problem category: A full 89% of Americans polled said they’d experienced shrinkflation at least once, and 59% said they observe it on a regular basis. More than one-quarter of shoppers (29%) said shrinkflation is “the most unfair” example of price hiking. Nearly one-third (30%) of U.S. consumers described the current price of groceries as “out of control.”
- Gas, utilities, housing also hard hit: While groceries were the category most cited as being out of control, gas prices (20.3%), utilities (10%), rent and/or mortgages (9.2%), healthcare costs (5.6%), insurance prices (4.7%), and dining out or takeout prices (3.4%) followed. Only 11.7% of those polled said that no categories felt like they were “out of control” in terms of prices.
- Borrowing for essentials is becoming normalized: When posed the question of whether they’d used a variety of financial instruments or tactics to cover essentials such as groceries, gas, utilities, rent or medical expenses over the last three months, more than one-third of American respondents (35.9%) said they’d used their credit card, even when “knowing I might not pay it off right away.” Smaller yet still notable cohorts said they’d borrowed money from family or friends (13.8%), used BNPL (12.7%), had dipped into savings allocated for something else (16.2%), had delayed paying a different bill (9.3%), had taken out a payday loan or cash advance (8.4%), or had utilized a store payment plan (7.6%). Just 36.2% said they had not used any of the above to pay for essential expenses.
- Brands only shoulder some of the blame: And while brands are suffering from consumer wrath, only 11.8% of respondents blamed put brands at the No. 1 position in terms of the blame game. The current Trump administration was the most common response in this regard (45.1%), followed by tariffs (23.9%), Congress (22.7%), a confusion as to who to blame (17.3%), and supply chain or shipping costs (12.2%).
“The general sentiment currently is that of distrust. Yes, politicians are the ones receiving the most blame, but brands shouldn’t think they’re let completely off the hook. On the contrary, consumers judge the economy through everyday experiences, including what they see on shelves and receipts. Every price increase, smaller package, or unexplained fee becomes a test of whether a company is acting fairly. Brands should take note of this. Losing trust is easy. Gaining it back takes much more time and effort,” Bauer added.
From a zipper jam on a nearly new coat to a casserole dish cracking in the oven on its third use, Americans are finding that the quality of many once-beloved name brands are declining. Three-quarters of Americans had a quality or service issue in 2025, the National Consumer Rage…
— Evan Kirstel #B2B #TechFluencer (@EvanKirstel) August 10, 2026
Critics Claim Activist Investors Pressuring for More Profits, Private Equity and Big Conglomerates Hollowing Out Once-Trusted Brands To Blame
Beyond the Omnisend results, reportage from The Guardian’s Heather Timmons — citing the National Consumer Rage Study — found that almost 75% of U.S. consumers had faced a quality or service issue in 2025, double the rate of the survey’s inaugural 1976 findings.
Those cited within the reportage largely indicated that activist investors pressuring for at-any-cost shareholder returns sacrificing product quality and service — as well as “big conglomerates and private equity buying up ‘trusted brands and riding that reputation out until it was a husk of what it was,’” according to one outspoken critic — were largely responsible for the increased friction between once-trusted brands and consumers.
BrainTrust
Nicholas Morine
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Discussion Questions
Do you believe that it is fair for U.S. consumers to place at least some of the blame on brands for price hikes? Why or why not? What can brands do to alleviate these sentiments?
Do you believe the data to be accurate regarding grocery products being the most vulnerable to perceptions of price gouging? How can grocery CPG brands avoid negative association with shrinkflation or undue price increases?
What is your biggest takeaway from the data presented? Are there any areas the data may have missed or misrepresented?
Poll
Consumers do not like price rises and, in our tracking data, most have not fully accepted the new normal – particularly in categories like grocery. That automatically makes them inclined to try and pin the blame somewhere, and retailers are one of the most visible parties. However, what consumers think on a survey does not always equate to the truth. In aggregate, retail margins are 19 basis points lower now (2026 so far) than they were back in 2019. So, overall, price increases have been used to cover higher costs (including tariffs). Sure, there are individual exceptions where margins have been padded, but in those cases, consumers can – and do – vote with their wallets.
As for how to deal with it, I don’t think retailers should really address it at all. For three reasons. First, because correcting a misapprehension is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. Second, because – despite what the research says – hardly any consumers want detailed breakdowns of price increases, and this does virtually nothing to make a higher price more palatable. And third, because the correct path through all of this is to ensure that the value of individual products is justified by making them desirable, great quality, and so forth – people are less resentful about paying for things they want or enjoy.
Consumers are getting battered at every turn, and there’s lots of blame to go around. If every player in the value chain is seeing higher costs, inevitably these get passed down and compounded by the time they hit the shopping cart or gas tank. It’s not surprising that grocery is especially noticeable since it is an unavoidable cost that virtually every consumer sees. Gas would be a close second. The biggest takeaway from the data: it’s bad and it’s hard to see it getting better anytime soon. Yes, brands need to take responsibility to offer value and justify their prices, but whoever touches the consumer last will be seen as responsible by the consumer. And shrinkflation is simply deceptive marketing and any brands that do this should be rewarded with a meaningful drop in market share.
The discussion seems to border on being tautological – are price rises to blame for inflation? – so to make any sense of it, we need to ask more fundamental questions: do brands take consumers for granted? do consumers enable that behavior by not shopping more wisely? I think the answer to both is “yes” to some extent. And it’s one consumers can solve themselves
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Consumers do not like price rises and, in our tracking data, most have not fully accepted the new normal – particularly in categories like grocery. That automatically makes them inclined to try and pin the blame somewhere, and retailers are one of the most visible parties. However, what consumers think on a survey does not always equate to the truth. In aggregate, retail margins are 19 basis points lower now (2026 so far) than they were back in 2019. So, overall, price increases have been used to cover higher costs (including tariffs). Sure, there are individual exceptions where margins have been padded, but in those cases, consumers can – and do – vote with their wallets.
As for how to deal with it, I don’t think retailers should really address it at all. For three reasons. First, because correcting a misapprehension is incredibly difficult and time-consuming. Second, because – despite what the research says – hardly any consumers want detailed breakdowns of price increases, and this does virtually nothing to make a higher price more palatable. And third, because the correct path through all of this is to ensure that the value of individual products is justified by making them desirable, great quality, and so forth – people are less resentful about paying for things they want or enjoy.
Consumers are getting battered at every turn, and there’s lots of blame to go around. If every player in the value chain is seeing higher costs, inevitably these get passed down and compounded by the time they hit the shopping cart or gas tank. It’s not surprising that grocery is especially noticeable since it is an unavoidable cost that virtually every consumer sees. Gas would be a close second. The biggest takeaway from the data: it’s bad and it’s hard to see it getting better anytime soon. Yes, brands need to take responsibility to offer value and justify their prices, but whoever touches the consumer last will be seen as responsible by the consumer. And shrinkflation is simply deceptive marketing and any brands that do this should be rewarded with a meaningful drop in market share.
The discussion seems to border on being tautological – are price rises to blame for inflation? – so to make any sense of it, we need to ask more fundamental questions: do brands take consumers for granted? do consumers enable that behavior by not shopping more wisely? I think the answer to both is “yes” to some extent. And it’s one consumers can solve themselves