Latest US consumption patterns

• US consumers have reduced spending acting more or less on choice rather than necessity.
• More than half the respondents in a recent McK survey said that they planned to keep their expenditures down after the recession. This finding suggests that companies must develop a deep understanding of how such profound behavioural change will affect strategies fundamental to value creation.
• The vast majority of US consumers are not only reducing their expenditures but also borrowing less, agressively paying down debt, and saving more.
• Personal savings rate reached a 14 year high, 5.7 percent of disposable income in March 2009. (But this is not even two thirds of the post WWII avg of 9 percent)