The majority of consumers in SA are unable to fill up a trolley in the best of times, let alone to finance a serious stockpile.
. The scope of this article does not allow a full explanation of how this segmentation was derived, but a few phenomena are notable from the graphic.living in 17 million households. About 1000 households are added to this number every day. South Africa has a very high number of young people – almost half of its population is under 24.
If we divide the country by household income as shown in the graphic, then 7 million would fall into the category of middle class and above. That means 50 million people are living in households below the level needed to support a middle class lifestyle. These 50 million people are likely to be using public transport and public health care and living with very little financial margin.
As one goes into the ultra poor and survivor category, households regularly run out of food before the end of the month.is a dependence on social grant income and a food shortage by the third week of the month. In addition, most poorer households live at least one taxi ride away from the closest supermarket and pay for extra seats on the taxi if purchasing more than a few bags of groceries.
Behavioural economists use many cognitive biases to explain why panic shopping occurs. Most commonly cited are phenomena like loss aversion, the bandwagon effect and probability neglect. These reactions to the initial run on essential groceries create a panic contagion that ignores logic. There is no food or toilet paper shortage and shopping is allowed to continue during this kind of state of emergency.
Times of crisis accentuate the gap between the privileged and the rest. When the stock market dips, the wealthy have reserves to buy more shares and multiply their wealth in the long run. When a health crisis hits, the wealthy have access to medicine and private health care and can often navigate around work restrictions.
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