{"id":438233,"date":"2026-05-08T06:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T06:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/438233\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T06:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T06:20:14","slug":"businesses-warn-of-looming-consumer-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/438233\/","title":{"rendered":"Businesses warn of looming consumer anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Major companies on Thursday warned that consumers globally will start pulling back on purchases, challenging the narrative of resilient spending despite the Iran war.<\/p>\n<p>Whirlpool pointed to a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/business\/earnings\/the-iran-war-is-crushing-whirlpools-profitsand-higher-prices-are-coming-98dd10bc?mod=hp_lead_pos6\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">recession-level industry decline<\/a>,\u201d caused in part by shoppers pulling back on big-ticket buys.<\/p>\n<p>Although <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/07\/business\/mcdonalds-earnings.html\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">fast food sales rose<\/a>, McDonald\u2019s warned of consumer \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2026-05-07\/mcdonald-s-sales-growth-falls-slightly-short-of-expectations\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">anxiety<\/a>\u201d as high gas prices dent sentiment.<\/p>\n<p>Kraft Heinz\u2019s CEO said people \u201care <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/business\/retail\/kraft-heinz-ceo-pushes-value-consumers-are-literally-running-out-of-money-72b9b50f?mod=hp_lista_pos4\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">literally running out of money<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Price pressures aren\u2019t just hitting at the pump.<\/p>\n<p>Lufthansa plans to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/87f47345-b26b-4118-85f6-fc23e6e7685f?syn-25a6b1a6=1\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">raise airfares<\/a> to offset higher jet fuel costs.<\/p>\n<p>Still, there are conflicting signals on the war\u2019s impact on consumer confidence. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/05\/06\/uber-and-disney-are-seeing-the-same-remarkable-dynamic-in-this-economy-both-stocks-are-surging.html\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Disney and Uber<\/a> this week said Americans are still spending on rides and resorts.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a3b0f509ecfbc7841502cc7b840ccd5b589ae970-2380x1956.png\"  alt=\"Consumer confidence index\" width=\"740\" height=\"608\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"_imageEmbed_1jdgl_38 _fullContentArea_1jdgl_42\" style=\"max-width:100%;color:transparent\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Major companies on Thursday warned that consumers globally will start pulling back on purchases, challenging the narrative of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-438233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}