We have seen that there have been predictions made about how it is going to be tough for the retail sector as well as brick-and-mortar stores in order to get back to normal. Now, it is also worth noting that normal here means the pre-Coronavirus sales and not the normal of a decade back when the e-commerce sector was very new and people were hesitant to buy from there. The pre-COVID normal is just a few months back at the start of this year when the outbreak was only limited to China.
So a worrying report has emerged out of the US where economists have raised an alarm for all the brick-and-mortar retailers operating in the country. They believe that the pre-COVID levels in sales might never be reached even after a few years of the pandemic situation ends. And this is because of the fact that a vaccine is still not developed and it is highly unlikely that crowds would be allowed to gather in fear of the Coronavirus spreading as it is highly contagious.
“The people who were maybe resistant to online shopping — maybe the older population that just wasn’t comfortable with that — have been forced to do that over the last couple of months and maybe now they’re more used to it, putting more pressure on brick-and-mortar”. The economist added that “We may see some spikes as restrictions are lifted, but I think the retail experience will be quite different, more expensive to run, with less overall demand for the foreseeable future,”
They added that “Policymakers will have a hard time convincing consumers that it is once again safe to go back to traditional patterns of shopping,”. At the same time, retailers are a major part of the economy so people will have to buy from them otherwise the entire system will be disturbed.
