Retailers are reopening across the country as stay-at-home orders lift. However, they continue to face state and local restrictions and are also reopening to a concerned customer base that might be reluctant to shop the way it used to. As a result, retailers are working to adapt their businesses to the new environment. Examples include:
- Offering curbside pickup – moving beyond restaurant meals to include other types of retail buying
- Boosting e-commerce capabilities – most of those who didn’t have it pre-pandemic are now offering it; those who did have it have been expanding their capabilities and making platforms both more sophisticated and more user-friendly
- Touchless sales/reduced in-person contact – beyond e-commerce, businesses are using vending machines, self-checkout lines, and mobile payment options
- Bundling – assembling craft, cooking, or DIY home project supplies into kits with online instructional videos
- Partnering – signing up with a third-party delivery business or third-party e-commerce platform, and working with complementary local businesses
- Changing the physical space – measures are varied and include installing plastic dividers, spacing out racks of goods, and even petitioning local governments to allow operations on sidewalks
- Rethinking the product mix – considering what consumers need now and figuring out a way to fit that into their business model to increase revenue and get people looking at other products (e.g., clothing retailers adding fashionable masks and refocusing to casual attire and loungewear)
For more information and discussion of opportunities, see The Freedonia Group’s extensive collection of off-the-shelf research, including an expanding catalog of COVID-19 Economic Impact reports, which highlight how various industries are responding to the current crisis with a comparison to recent recessions. Freedonia Custom Research is also available for questions requiring tailored market intelligence.