The first piece of advice for anyone struggling to afford their weekly shop is always to trade down. Dump the big brands for the cheaper, supermarket-labelled rivals that don’t have to absorb the cost of a multimillion-pound advertising campaign.
It was inevitable, then, that Britons engulfed in a cost of living crisis would think twice before piling their trolleys full of Unilever’s goods.
Sales of the consumer goods giant’s discretionary products, such as Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, fell victim to what Unilever calls “downtrading” (and the rest of us call trading down). The company has also passed on the impact of inflation to consumers, hurting sales at brands such as Persil and Cif, too. Its volumes across Europe fell by almost 11 per cent
