Luke Vargas

Like a pretty fragile macro outlook, a lot of anxiety.

We've covered here recently about jobs, for instance.

The housing market's got plenty of issues around affordability and just availability.

And yet the spending is continuing.

Is that just a U.S.

phenomenon right now?

Looking at earnings, at least, these companies aren't reporting major losses.

You know, even as consumers, you say they're getting creative here, they're trading down, you know, looking for alternate brands, though that has to have some impact on the bottom line.

I mean, there's a reason many of these companies like people to buy their brand name products, right?

So I'm just curious what all this means for these consumer facing brands.

And a shopper might see this, what, scan a code here on your phone to see what the actual price is or a digital screen, buy an item on a shelf or something like that?

You mentioned private label.

In terms of how the brands see this on their bottom line, are they finding ways to increase their margins there?

They've got to, right?

If that's where the consumer's going, that's got to become a more efficient part of their business.

I've been speaking to Melissa Minko, the Global Director for Retail Strategy and Insights at CI&T.

Melissa, thank you so much for being with us on What's News.

And that's it for What's News for this Thursday morning.

Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer.

Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff.