Cautious Consumers Still Willing to Pay for Big Macs, Huggies as Prices Rise
- From McDonald’s to Nestlé, companies maintain pricing power
- A decline in confidence is a fresh warning sign for spending
McDonald's Big Mac burger.
Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
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Consumers are still spending on McDonald’s Corp. hamburgers, Nestlé SA coffee creamer and Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s Huggies diapers even as prices for those products rise, helping boost sales for some of the biggest companies in the US and Europe.
Shoppers have remained willing to shoulder higher prices for certain goods even as retail sales more broadly have declined. Yet there are questions about how resilient consumers will remain in the coming months, as central banks continue to raise interest rates and concern grows that a slowing economy could lead to more job losses.