Jakarta – A representative of Kantar Worldpanel Indonesia, a market research company, says there has been a steep decline in consumer purchasing frequency this year amid the global economic slowdown.

The company's research showed that the purchasing frequency of Indonesian consumers saw an 8 percent drop from April last year to this year.

"This is the lowest so far, even though the declining trend has been around since 2013. As it has hit this point, there's a possibility that it will slowly stabilize," the firm's general manager, Lim Soon Lee, said here on Friday.

She added that there had also been a 3 percent drop in the consumer reach point (CRP) overall, which was computed from the number and frequency of households buying a certain brand, from 2013 to 2014, according to the company's Brand Footprint survey.

"They've saved their money and spent less to adjust to the current economic condition," Lee added.

Major retailers such as the fashion and supermarket businesses also reported a decline in earnings during the January to March period, such as Ramayana supermarket, which saw its total revenues decline by 5.1 percent to Rp 1.12 trillion (US$84.33 million) in the first three months of this year, compared to Rp 1.18 trillion last year. (fsu)

Source: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/06/05/ri-consumer-purchasing-frequency-steep-decline.html