Brazilian spent more on psychologist, car and pet in 2021, says Itaú

Brazilian consumers increased their expenses with services related to vehicles, psychologists, veterinarians and pet shops in 2021, according to the balance of purchases made with Itaú Unibanco cards and sales made by Rede, the bank’s means of payment company.

The total value of transactions grew by 24.5% in 2021, after an expansion of only 3.5% in 2020. The number of transactions increased by 25.4%. The share of online shopping was 21.1% – it was around 18% before the pandemic.

Generations Y (born 1985 to 1999) and Z (2000 to 2010) accounted for 37% and 38% of online transactions, respectively. Baby Boomers (born 1945 to 1964) come in at 26%, and Generation X (1965 to 1984) at 31%.

Among the segments highlighted in the year are the amount and amount of spending on psychologists, which increased by about 40% in both items compared to 2020. In this case, the number of transactions was higher among women (58%) than among women. men.

In generational terms, Y is the highlight: those born between 1985 and 1999 accounted for 41% of operations. Considering only the last quarter of 2021, there was a rise in the number of transactions of 76% among women and 16% among men in this age group.

Moisés Nascimento, Itaú’s Director of Strategy and Data Engineering, also highlights the advance in mobility reflected in the increase in expenses with parking, tolls, car washes and oil changes, all around 50%. Other vehicle maintenance expenses increased by 27%.

“We are leaving home more. Living this new normal”, he says. “This growth denotes the Brazilian back to traffic, to more face-to-face activities.”

The petshop and vets sector grew 25.5% in the year, with emphasis on the 143% increase in online transactions. The increase was close to 60% among Gen Z consumers (born from 2000 to 2010).

By region, only the Northeast had lower-than-average spending in this segment. A possible explanation, according to Nascimento, is that the region concentrates almost a third of the country’s cats (data from the IBGE) and these animals generate a lower expense in relation to dogs, according to the sector association.

Two sectors that were close to stability in 2020, food and health and well-being (hospitals, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, etc.), had growth close to 30% in 2021. Tourism and gas stations, which shrank in the previous year, advanced around 50% in 2021.

Nascimento says that the share of non-face-to-face purchases has stopped increasing, given the resumption of face-to-face transactions, after a rapid advance in the first months of 2020 after the decree of the pandemic and restrictions related to the health crisis.

He says that the increase in online consumption is a trend and that its share in the total should continue to gradually increase in the long term.

​Julia Gottlieb, economist at Itaú Unibanco, says that more recent data from the industrial and service sectors show that the omicron variant of the coronavirus has affected the economy less, compared to the damage caused by the first waves of Covid.

As a result, the global economy is growing, despite the risks posed by rising interest rates in several developed economies in response to rising inflation.

Itaú projects growth of 4.4% in 2021 (as it will be known in March this year) and a retraction of 0.5% in 2022 for the Brazilian economy. The deceleration is mainly attributed to the increase in interest rates, which should rise from the current 10.75% to 12.50% per year, according to the institution’s projection.

Gottlieb says that the monetary tightening tends to hit, mainly, the sectors whose sales depend more on credit.

“The data from the end of last year were more positive, but the ones from January point to some weakness in the economy ahead”, he says.