COVID-19 has ultimately transformed the way we shop. Download our eBook to learn more about how our retail is changed and what to expect post-pandemic.
You don’t shop the way you used to.
While stores have opened up, people are still becoming comfortable with waiting in line for groceries to allow for social distancing measures to take place. When shopping for clothes, people must contend with challenges like changing rooms that have been closed due to changes in sanitation protocols. And of course, all shopping takes place from behind a mask.
And these changes are just from a buyer’s perspective.
Certainly, retail has had to transform the way it does business in order to stay on top of the trends imposed by COVID-19. To dive more deeply into this matter, we have written a comprehensive eBook, “Retail and COVID-19: Nothing Will Be the Same,” that examines some of the disruptive change taking place and how businesses are responding.
Interested in our Digital IT solutions for Retail? Check them out today!
The COVID-19 Moment
COVID-19 is challenging the retail sector. Unfortunately, according to Retail Customer Experience, consumers in many areas of the world have stopped spending as much money as they normally would as jobs are lost and lower wages are earned. COVID-19 has certainly brought about a time of uncertainty as many are unsure as to how long this pandemic will last. The landscape is changing too, shaped by panic buying, customers looking to physically avoid one another, and a switch to online retailers rather than visiting brick-and-mobile locations. From companies’ perspective, they must look into trends like diversifying their supply chain and examine how they deliver goods to ensure the health of their customers while still coming out on the other side of this crisis.
Did you miss our webinar on how Brick and Mortar became Brick and Mobile? Watch the replay here!
A New Landscape for Digital Retail Industry
The new normal set to follow COVID-19 is still clouded with uncertainty. Yet, it allows us to pinpoint specific situations that will likely remain for a long time, even after the suspension of social distancing and the relaxation of quarantine. The fear of people and the possibility of COVID-19 contagion will cool with the emergence of a vaccine; however the experience of this crisis will certainly not be forgotten, and the awareness that we are indeed more fragile than we previously imagined will remain with us as a definitive learning experience, ultimately promoting behavioral changes.
Certainly, people will think differently and act differently after the crisis has been controlled. Many changes were implemented during the pandemic in order to protect people, increase productivity, and improve results in a new operating model that better meets the demands coming from online retail channels and prevents accidents, which will now no longer be limited to mechanical occurrences or poisonous chemicals, but also biological threats. These changes will perpetuate and be part of companies’ daily routines in production, storage, distribution, transportation, exposure in sales areas, and delivery to the final customer.
The current period has given us the opportunity to learn, but above all, has given us reflections about the habits we need to adopt.
The changes implemented, much faster than originally planned, support the benchmark that has been used in the market and has accomplished in a few months what typically would be done in a few years. These changes will certainly allow companies to go through this COVID-19 phase, and emerge much stronger than they entered.
However, time has already shown signs that companies that position themselves on this successful trajectory will clearly have, in addition to adhering to strategies associated with digital transformation, increased care for the greatest asset in the universe: people.
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Download the eBook
Are you curious about retail’s changing landscape amid COVID-19? We invite you to download our eBook, “Retail and COVID-19: Nothing Will Be the Same,” to learn more about the topics covered and see the intersection of COVID-19 and retail through a new perspective.
