As retail reopens and consumers ease into some semblance of normalcy amid the coronavirus pandemic, once commonplace activities such as shopping for apparel and provisions online — and getting a haircut — appear to be taking priority.
In this week’s Coresight Research U.S. Survey Update, the firm said the most popular activities in the past two weeks were making online purchases of apparel, and online grocery shopping.
“Among the activities specifically related to spending in the past two weeks, making online purchases of apparel was the top option, with one-third of all respondents stating that they have done so,” authors of the report said, adding that, “This was followed by online grocery shopping, with a little less than one-third of consumers having done this in the past two weeks.”
But for the next two weeks, more specifically, consumers said they soon expect to get a haircut, which overtook purchasing apparel online as the top spending-related activity, authors of the report said. “Consumers are returning to their normal activities selectively and cautiously,” the firm explained.
Image courtesy of Coresight Research.
And as shoppers are to stores as bees are to honey, it comes as no surprise that consumers’ concerns about returning to public places has reached an all-time low: 65 percent of respondents now anticipate avoiding some kind of public place or travel after lockdowns end, versus 68 percent last week, according to the report.
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As fears appear to be minimizing all around, consumers’ avoidance of shopping centers and malls also dropped slightly, to 43 percent this week.
But perhaps the most interesting statistic is the percentage of shoppers that expect to retain changed behaviors from the crisis period over the long term, which has consistently been two-thirds of respondents. “The proportion of respondents expecting to switch their shopping to the e-commerce channel remained stable at three in 10 this week,” according to the report.
Yet, the firm said there is generally an “upward trend in expectations to shop less overall,” as one-quarter of respondents said they expect to shop less overall, versus 22 percent last week.
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