Inflation is here, and it’s impacting every consumer-facing brand from beauty to grocery.

You can’t go far without noticing its impact on consumers and industries alike. So, when we began talks of launching the second season of our podcast, Market with me Quikly, it only made sense to start with a conversation on the state of the marketplace.

We reached out to Barbara Connors, vice president of commercial insights at 84.51° — a retail data science, insights and media company — to gain some insight on how inflation is impacting consumer spending. Connors has nearly 20 years of experience in client leadership, a BBA and Masters from the University of Georgia and has worked with some of the world’s most recognizable CPG companies in the grocery retail industry.

She shared many gems throughout our conversation. Here are some of our favorites:

The effects of inflation To kick off the conversation, we asked Connors to explain in layman’s terms what inflation truly is.

“Inflation, in its simplest explanation, is just a steady rise in prices,” Connors said. “And currently the consumer prices have grown at the fastest rate that we’ve seen in the last four decades.”

Connors says prices can either go up because of a sharp increase in demand or a decrease in supply. In our current environment, we have both.

“The pandemic caused both an increase in consumer demand for goods — we had a lot of people that were staying at home and saving money, so then they were looking to spend money that was pent up to buy things…” said Connors. “And then at the same time, we saw supply constraints hit the market, because COVID also caused a lot of disruption to supply chains and factories and plants had to close…”

Click here to read the full Quikly article.