“Life beyond lockdown” looks a lot like it did before the coronavirus pandemic — barring that consumers are now more interested in shopping online for apparel and acutely aware of overall health and wellbeing while they’re out and about, according to a new report by Coresight Research.
In its weekly report, online purchases of apparel remained the top option among the activities specifically related to spending in the past two weeks, while approximately one-fifth of survey respondents said they have bought apparel in a store in the past two weeks.
And though this figure is lower than the number of consumers who bought apparel online, it represents a six-percentage-point increase week-over-week, authors of the report noted, which may mean that shoppers could be back in stores sooner than anticipated.
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Newly coveted activities, such as dining in a restaurant, jumped into the top four activities that consumers have done in the past two weeks, “with almost one-quarter reporting that they have done so, versus one-fifth when we asked the question last week,” according to the report.
As far as buying beauty products or visiting open-air shopping centers, the data suggests that fewer consumers expect to do these activities in the upcoming two weeks than the proportion that had done them in the past two weeks, the report said.
Finally, there appears to be a slowdown in the online grocery market: The proportion of respondents who have bought groceries online in the past two weeks declined from 31 percent last week to 29 percent this week. The authors of the report added that expectations to buy groceries online are down by around four percentage points versus actual behavior in the past two weeks.
Interestingly, responses about retaining behaviors from the crisis period appear to have softened. “Each week, we ask respondents which, if any, behaviors they will retain from the crisis period. This week, around six in 10 respondents expect to retain some changed behaviors over the long terms, down from two-thirds last week.”
And as consumers head back to workplaces and prepare to be out in public more frequently, there is a higher regard for health and safety. “We have seen consistent or near-consistent upward trends in expectations to focus more on health and wellbeing and wear masks/gloves in the past couple of weeks, with around one-third of respondents expecting to do each this week.”
“In addition, we saw slight decreases in expectations to shop less overall and shop more online [although the changes are both within the margin of error]. Around one-fifth of respondents expect to shop less overall, versus one-quarter last week. Some 27 percent of respondents expect to switch their shopping to the e-commerce channel, compared to one in three last week.”
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