We regularly bring you pricing updates for protein RTMs, but what about how prices have been trending over the past year? We’ve analysed all protein RTM products* sold on Amazon UK between May 2023 and April 2024 to better understand what’s been going on.
So, what stood out?
In a word, decrease.
The underpinning trend across all categories is a drop in price when compared to the same time last year. Some categories have a smaller decrease of under £3 — namely WPC, plant single, plant multi and meal replacement. But the biggest drops were in the region of £6-£7 (WPI, collagen, whey blend and clear whey).
So what could be driving these changes?
Before answering this question, it's worth acknowledging that some categories on Amazon can show quite volatile price trends. This is due to those such as WPI and clear whey only having a low number of products that achieve 500 sales, and is more pronounced in the UK than the US.
Still, it's intriguing to see how the greater decreases appeared in traditionally more expensive categories.
UK food inflation has been steadily dropping over the last six months, so this will have a part to play here — allowing brands to lower their costs to tempt customers.
For the more expensive categories, this decrease will be proportionally higher. When coupled with the fact that consumers naturally forgo more expensive products when economic conditions are tough, it would make sense to see bigger decreases across these product types.
While not an exact comparison, we did also observe decreases in some RTM prices in the EU over a similar period, suggesting this trend will continue while inflation continues to drop.
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*Products that achieved a minimum of 500 sales in a given month. Prices shown are the median.
