Report: Consumers Have Mixed Feelings on Spending
When it comes to spring spending in 2025, consumers plan to keep the home fires burning, as the British sang during World War I. In 21st century America, however, nothing spells patriotism like consumerism.
Although consumer confidence has been taking a dive this year, falling to a 12-year low in March. With inflation persistent and tariffs looming, consumers will still spend some money, according to Resonate, a real-time consumer data platform, but they’ll be concentrating on home improvement.
In its Consumer Trends: Spring 2025 Outlook report, Resonate discovered that “not only are [consumers’] biggest political concerns all related to national issues rather than global threats, but their plans for their wallets are also centered around the home.”
Resonate created the data set with its Resonate AI Data Engine, rAI which processes four sources of data to understand the past, know what’s happening in real time, and predict what consumers will do next with a high degree of precision.
Fear is keeping American consumers focused on three situations and giving them equal weight of concern: 42% of the database cited healthcare costs or debt, erratic government leadership, and corruption in the U.S. government.
A recession and rising taxes were next on the list with 38% expressing concern about both issues. Next up were concerns about crime and violence (37%), rising fuel prices (35%), cost of living (32%), and illegal immigration (30%).
Some 42.5% of consumers think the U.S. economy will “never return to normal,” up from 36% six months ago.
Surprisingly, though, consumers expressed high optimism about their personal finances, remaining steady from sentiment six months ago when 51.5% of consumers reported feeling good about their personal finances. Fewer people said they were feeling worse off financially.
These seemingly incongruous sentiments could stem from the fact that just over 30% of U.S. adults reported they are debt free, a rise from 26.8% in the summer and fall of 2024.
Continuing the “home” theme, just under a third (30%) of Americans said they plan to spend Easter Sunday at home visting family, while 13% said they would host Easter dinner, while a quarter said they plan to attend a church service.
About 40 percent plan to stay home all summer, foregoing travel during paid time off. The remainder who do travel, will alter their spending. Almost 22% said they will keep their travel spending below $1,000, while 16% has earmarked up to $5,000 on trip-related expenses.
As we know, consumer sentiment can change with the wind, and the wind out of Washington is blowing towards tariffs (starting April 2). At the time of this report, U.S. consumer who were debt-free were still looking for ways to spend that expendable income.
For instance, as recently as February, the percentage of consumers who wanted to postpone or even cancel big-ticket items such as buying a new or used car actually fell by more than 20%.
Those planning to cancel or postpone home improvements fell by a little more than 12%, and those planning to cancel or postpone a major household purchase (such as furniture or appliances) fell 7%, compared to late last year.
Look for Resonate’s Consumer Trends: Summer 2025 Outlook report, scheduled for release in some time in mid-April. By then, we should have a fuller picture of the new administration’s affect on the economy and consumer sentiment.
