Ukrainian Consumer Basket: An Indicator of a Country Living in Adaptation Mode

19:06, 26.12.2025 4 min read

Inna Sirchenko, Deputy Director for Business Development and Marketing at Ascania FMCG

At year's end, we typically tally results with numbers. But there's another way to understand what's happening in the country – look at Ukrainians' consumer basket.

It works as a household economic indicator: it shows not what we plan, but what we can actually afford; not what we'd like to buy, but what we purchase when we need to balance necessity with "wants."

The global problem becoming increasingly visible through the basket's structure is the narrowing space for choice. When uncertainty becomes prolonged, consumption turns into constant optimization: people count more often, give up parts of their plans, postpone "for later" what was routine just a few years ago. And paradoxically – alongside this rationality, small "anchor" purchases often remain, giving a sense of normalcy and control.

Ascania FMCG operates in daily demand categories, so for us, consumer basket analysis isn't an abstract topic but a way to read reality. We regularly track consumer sentiment and shelf changes, and have accumulated internal statistics allowing us to compare dynamics between 2021 and 2025.

An important clarification: these observations don't claim to be a "portrait of the country," but they highlight trends well in the categories we work with.

The overall picture according to our data:

• Overall, consumption in physical terms decreased by 18% in 2025 compared to 2021. Two main factors: significant price increases over these 4 years and population decline
• The confectionery category suffered most: -40% in consumption. This is primarily related to the rise in cocoa raw material prices (3-4 times)

In middle-income households' baskets, stable positions are held by everyday demand items – those ensuring basic comfort and a sense of "normal life." In our sample, these include bakery products, dairy products, non-alcoholic beverages, and goods purchased "by inertia" – because they're familiar, accessible, and work.

In numbers, these top-3 product groups look like this:

У цифрах ці топ-3 продуктові групи виглядають так: 

We also note that Ukrainians began consuming less beer: -18% compared to 2021 in physical units.

In parallel, we see another trend difficult to explain by income alone. In the "middle income" segment, consumers can be very strict about basic purchases yet simultaneously keep several categories in their basket that serve as habits or "small recovery." In our observations, such markers include, for example, whisky, heated tobacco sticks, and snacks. Their consumption changed as follows:

• Tobacco products (Heets type, sticks, nicotine pouches) +35% vs. 2021
• Premium strong alcohol (whisky, gin, rum, tequila) +8% vs. 2021
• Snacks +12% vs. 2021

Another signal becoming more noticeable in 2025 – the basket is becoming more fragmented. There's no single "average" scenario: different consumer groups differ not only in product selection but in purchase logic – frequency, packaging format, price sensitivity, willingness to try new things.

This manifests in the following:

• Average receipt stops being representative. Many receipts become smaller (quick purchases) and more emotional (occasional "mood-based" receipts).
• Receipts decrease while their frequency increases. Consumers do less "bulk shopping," and purchases become more situational than planned.
• Divergence in promo behavior: part of consumers switched almost entirely to promos only, another part reduced frequency or purchase format. This again proves the absence of an "average buyer."

Our cautious conclusion: comparing 2021 and 2025, the consumer basket increasingly reflects not "tastes" but a survival method in prolonged uncertainty. It's a combination of pragmatism (covering basic needs) and small "anchors" (habit or a small reward) that help maintain psychological balance.

For FMCG business, this poses a more complex task than simply "providing a product." We need to understand consumers more precisely: how they make decisions, where their compromise boundary lies, and what they're not ready to give up even in difficult years.

That's why we at Ascania FMCG carefully watch basket dynamics and try to speak about it honestly – as the real experience of people at the end of another challenging year.

Despite partial stabilization, the FMCG market in 2025 still lags 2021 by 18%, and consumer behavior increasingly resembles not recovery but weary adaptation, where savings, compromises, and individual scenarios become the new normal.