Online Shoppers Catch a Break From Inflation

​​Apparel prices rose 4.93 percent the past 12 months and 8.72 percent in August, compared with July. Adobe says that July’s dip was largely due to high inventories and back-to-school sales. 

​​​Grocery prices online, like grocery prices at the supermarket, soared in August, Adobe says. Food prices jumped 14.14 percent over the past 12 months, a record for the category. Online grocery prices have risen the past 31 months, Adobe says.​​

Pet products rose 12.7 percent, also a record for the category. Many people adopted pets during the pandemic, and demand for all things pets has remained high. ​

Behind the numbers​

Adobe’s Digital Price Index (DPI) and the BLS’s CPI have considerable differences. The DPI looks at data from a trillion visits to retail sites and measures 18 product categories. The CPI uses surveys and personal visits to stores by data collectors. The CPI collects about 94,000 prices per month by its commodities and services survey alone, and measures eight major categories.​​

Notably absent from the DPI are gas and other energy products, which account for 8.8 percent of the CPI, as well as shelter, which is 32.2 percent of the CPI. Energy prices were 23.8 percent higher in August 2022 than they were in August 2021, according to the BLS, even though the price of gas fell 10.6 percent in August, compared with July. Shelter costs rose 6.2 percent the past 12 months, the BLS says.​​

Consumers have spent $64.6 billion online in August, up 6.5 percent from the previous year but down from the $73.7 billion spent in July, when numbers were boosted in part to record sales for Amazon’s Prime Day. So far this year, consumers have spent $590 billion online, Adobe says. ​

Note: This story was edited on Sept. 13, 2022, to reflect recent changes in the Consumer Price Index.