Consumer Price Index: Durable and Personal Goods | July 2025

Price growth for consumer durables and personal goods decelerated sharply on a monthly basis in July, with a month-over-month increase of +0.17% compared to a revised monthly +0.75% increase in June. The deceleration of price growth was primarily driven by slower price growth of appliances, communication, personal care, and recreation products, as well as a nearly 200 basis point increase in discount activity from 21.2% in July to 23.1% in July.

Some of the price growth deceleration in July was likely due to an increase in discounting activity, driven in part by Amazon’s Prime Week and the announcement of similar promotional events by BestBuy.com, Target.com, and Walmart.com. While Amazon is the host of Prime Week, it turns out that Walmart.com actually stole the show this year in terms of both discount frequency compared to its competitors as well as differential between itself during the rest of the month. Nearly 60% of all products on Walmart.com were discounted during Prime Week, leading the pack. Amazon.com finished second at 46.2%, followed by BestBuy.com at 29.1%, and Target.com with 2.66%.

What’s more, Walmart.com’s discount frequency rate was nearly three times higher during Prime Week compared to the rest of the month (59.6% vs. 21.5%). BestBuy.com was second with about a 9 percentage point difference, followed by Amazon with a 6.2 percentage point difference, and last was Target.com with actually showed higher discount rates in the rest of the month than during Prime Week.

A slightly different story emerges when we look at the magnitude of discounts offered by these retailers during the month of July. Walmart.com again led the pack with a typical discount of 26.8% on discounted items. Amazon.com was second with 21.2%, followed BestBuy.com with a typical discount of 20.1%, and last was Target at 19.2%. The interesting takeaway is that only Amazon.com actually showed a higher discount magnitude during Prime Week compared to the other days of the month, while the other three retailers surprisingly showed higher discounts outside of Prime Week in July.

• Key CPI Takeaways for June 2025 & Macroeconomic Outlook
• Product Group Highlights
  • Appliances
  • Communication
  • Home Improvement
  • Personal Care
  • Recreation
• CPI 2025 Forecast: Macroeconomic Summary
• Methodology

Overall OpenBrand Consumer Price Index Movement: The OpenBrand CPI of Durable and Personal Goods recorded a +0.17% monthly change in July, notching the eighth consecutive month-over-month increase and 13th of the last 14th. While prices continue to grow, the magnitude of price change decelerated significantly from June’s large increase of +0.75%.

Discount Trends: July brought a relatively sharp increase in discount activity to the durables and personal goods sector, with frequencies rising month-over-month to 23.1% of all durable and personal goods from 21.2% in the month prior. This was the highest reading since December and the second largest in three years. Despite the uptick in discount frequency in July, the typical magnitude remained relatively unchanged at 20.2%. This suggests the flurry of discounting activity brought on by Amazon’s Prime Week and their competitors primarily brought breadth – but not depth – to pricing discounts of durable and personal goods.

Product Group Price Trends: Three product groups – Appliances, Communications, and Recreation – all experienced sharp decreases in the rate of price growth from the prior month, while Home Improvement was flat. Personal Care products exhibited relatively strong negative growth.

• Appliance Group (+0.21%)
• Communication Group (+0.16%)
• Home Improvement Group (+0.45%)
• Personal Care Group (-0.32%)
• Recreation Group (+0.23%)

See the full breakdown of product groupings. 

CPI: Appliances

Prices for appliances increased by +0.21% on a month-over-month basis in July, slowing from a revised decrease of +0.31% in the month prior. The deceleration in price growth was at least partially driven by an increase in the frequency of discounts (43.7% from 42.6% the month prior), while the typical discount magnitude increased slightly to 16.7% from 16.5% the month prior.

CPI: Communication

Prices of communication devices, including phones, tablets, computers, and printers, rose on a month-over-month basis to +0.16%, down sharply from a revised +1.29% the month prior. Both the frequency and magnitude of discounts increased in July, from 10.00% to 11.90% and 19.9% to 20.5%, respectively. This is the third consecutive month of both increasing discount frequencies and magnitudes in the communications group.

CPI: Home Improvement

The index for home improvement goods was essentially flat on a month-over-month basis and grew by +0.45% (down from +0.46% the month prior), showing 27 consecutive month-over-month flat or monthly increases. The increase in prices comes amidst slight increases in both the frequency (rising to 12.7% from 12.6%) and magnitude (rising to 18.5% from 17.8%). This is the second consecutive month in which discounting activity – in both frequency and magnitude – increased over the month prior.

CPI: Personal Care

Prices of personal care products decreased sharply on a monthly basis in July by -0.32%, down from +0.00% in June. This decrease comes amidst changes in the frequency of discounts increasing a full 420 basis points, growing to 26.1% in July from 21.9% in June. The typical discount magnitude increased by 50 basis points. from 21.2% in June to 21.7% in July.

CPI: Recreation

The rate of price growth of recreational products, including TVs, headphones, and speaker systems, decreased sharply to +0.23% on a month-over-month basis in July, down from a revised +1.80% in June. Some of this sharp decrease in the pace of price growth is at least partially due to an increase in the frequency of discounts – to 20.8% in July from 18.7% in June – and a moderate increase in the average magnitude of discounts – to 23.8% from 22.1% over the same time period.

As of August 2025, the U.S. economy stands at a pivotal moment—balancing between a broader cooling inflationary cycle with newly imposed tariffs by the Trump Administration.

Signs of cooling in rate-sensitive parts of the economy are increasingly visible. Residential investment remains subdued, with affordability challenges still weighing on home sales despite a modest drop in mortgage rates. Commercial real estate, especially office space, continues to struggle with vacancy and refinancing risk. Business capital spending has softened, particularly among smaller firms facing tighter lending standards.

Globally, the economic outlook remains mixed. Europe is facing stagnant growth, while China is managing a sluggish recovery amid weak consumer demand and ongoing property sector woes. Trade volumes are gradually recovering, but new patterns of supply chain diversification and industrial realignment are creating longer-term structural shifts. The U.S. is benefitting from “friendshoring” and renewed interest in domestic production, but the transition carries upfront costs that feed into prices and investment uncertainty.

Looking forward, the Federal Reserve is expected to begin lowering interest rates cautiously, with the first cut likely coming at the end of this quarter if inflation continues to trend downward. Given the transient nature of tariffs impacting price growth, we suspect prices may revert to a more downward trend. However, policymakers remain concerned about the risk of cutting too early and reigniting inflation, especially given the ongoing strength in consumer demand and wage growth. Financial markets have largely priced in a gradual easing cycle, though volatility remains a risk if inflation data surprises to the upside.

In summary, the U.S. economy in August 2025 is in a transitional phase—shifting from post-pandemic overheating to a slower, more sustainable path. Inflation may come back down after some acceleration in June, the result of the transient and stepwise impact of recently implemented tariffs. Economic growth is moderating, but not collapsing. And policy is shifting from restraint to gradual accommodation. The challenge for the rest of the year will be to maintain this delicate balance, ensuring that disinflation continues without tipping the economy into contraction. In sum, the foundation is solid, but the path forward could prove to be tricky from a monetary perspective.

Note: This summary is based on data available as of early August 2025 and may be subject to revisions in future releases.

For questions about the report, please contact Ralph McLaughlin at ralph@openbrand.com 

For press inquiries, please contact press@openbrand.com 

The OpenBrand CPI of Durable and Personal Goods is constructed using a data-driven methodology that ensures accuracy, timeliness, and transparency in measuring price trends for both short and long-lasting consumer products. The methodology consists of the following key components:

1. Data Collection

• Real-Time Price Tracking: Prices are sourced daily from online marketplaces, retail websites, and brick-and-mortar store listings.
• Retailer & Manufacturer Data: Aggregates pricing information from major retailers, direct-to-consumer brands, and wholesale suppliers into broader consumer categories.
• Temporal Coverage: Captures price variations over time, including daily discounts and price promotions

2. Product Selection & Tracking

• Durable and Personal Goods Focus: The index includes products with an expected lifespan of three years or more, such as home appliances, consumer electronics, and tools, as well as personal care products with a shorter lifespan, such as hair and skin care products, vitamins, over-the-counter medications, and oral care products. 
• Brand & Model Tracking: Individual brands and models are monitored to reflect pricing shifts within competitive product segments, including both permanent changes in listing price as well as temporary promotional pricing.

3. Price Calculation, Adjustments, and Weighting

• Price Calculation: Tracks month-over-month and year-over-year price movements to measure price stability in the marketplace and take into account both longer-term changes in pricing (such as changes in manufacturer’s suggested retail price) as well as more short-term changes in pricing, such as promotional discounts and sales prices. 
• SKU-Removal Instead of Hedonic Adjustments: When a product (or SKU) becomes unavailable in the BLS goods basket, the BLS implements a SKU-replacement procedure whereby the next most similar product is used in its place, and a quality (hedonic) adjustment procedure is performed to get closer to an apples-to-apples price comparison. Since OpenBrand has data on nearly 100% of the SKUs pricing history in a given product category, we can simply remove that SKU from the basket and rely on price changes of the remaining SKUs in that basket. This eliminates the need for hedonic adjustment in the OpenBrand CPI basket.
• Weighting and Aggregation Method: A weighted geometric mean formula is used to minimize volatility and improve stability in price trend analysis at both the product grouping and category level. Instead of using sales-volume weights when aggregating the index, we take an alternative approach by using persistence-based weights for aggregation. Instead of more frequently purchased items getting more weight in the BLS’ CPI calculation, OpenBrand takes a more novel approach by weighting items with a more established price history in the market more heavily in our CPI calculation than items with a less established history.

4. Reporting & Updates

• High-Frequency Updates: Published freely on a monthly basis, with a subscription option for daily summaries across categories, sub-categories, and individual products.
• Comparative Benchmarks: We aggregate pricing as analogously as possible to traditional BLS CPI measures for benchmarking purposes.
• Transparency & Accessibility: Provides both open and paid data access for journalists, researchers, businesses, and policymakers.

By leveraging real-time data and advanced statistical techniques, the OpenBrand CPI offers an accurate and dynamic measure of pricing trends, helping businesses and consumers make informed decisions in an evolving economic landscape.