In the retail world, the holiday shopping season is just around the corner. Like it or not, we’re likely to see commercials and ads with pictures of Santa pretty soon.
This year is going to be different. The pandemic has already changed the way we shop, and the coming holiday season will be a litmus test for retail and its ability to adapt to the current environment. New shopping behaviors have taken hold, old shopping habits have lost some of their popularity, and a lot of question marks still exist.
I just read a very good article on RIS’s website titled 2020 Holiday Retail Forecasts and Predictions. The piece is a comprehensive evaluation of the upcoming holiday season. Conventional wisdom would have you believe that the holiday season will be an absolute bust with high unemployment rate and other pandemic-related ills. However, as the article points out:
“Lower projected holiday growth this season is not surprising given the state of the economy,” says Daniel Bachman, Deloitte’s U.S. economic forecaster. “While high unemployment and economic anxiety will weigh on overall retail sales this holiday season, reduced spending on pandemic-sensitive services such as restaurants and travel may help bolster retail holiday sales somewhat. E-commerce is likely to be a big winner because consumers have shown a clear movement towards buying online rather than at brick and mortar stores.”
Consumer use of the different purchase channels will also be very interesting to keep an eye on. The prognosticators, according to the article, think that e-commerce will continue to grow significantly as people avoid physical store. Further, they see consumers relying more on “buy online pickup in store” (BOPIS) and curbside pickup as a way to stay out of the store.
These shifts are going to require retailers to add a level of nimbleness into their business that they might not have had in the past. They need to be able to shift between online, BOPIS, and curb pickup as the demand ebbs and flows, all while maintaining a safe in-store experience for those who want to shop the “old fashioned way.”
As someone who studies shopper behavior, I look forward to seeing how all this works itself out in the upcoming months.
Overview by Peter Reville, Director, Primary Research Services at Mercator Advisory Group