Retail over the past two years due to recent events hasn’t had the easiest of rides with figures down significantly during the pandemic reducing by 19 percent. However, the figures in later months rose slightly with the UK opening up and people being able to do a lot more, but it isn’t to say that it will get back to the positions retail was at prior to 2020.
With the pandemic, it has had a lasting effect on retail stores both in a positive and negative way. The negative impact will be the lower number of customers in-stores; however, in correlation with this, online sales have increased for a number of different retail industries with a vast majority having to move very quickly online if they weren’t before.
How retail is constantly changing
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The difficult thing with retail is that it is a constantly changing environment as there are a number of factors that are always changing in this area.
- Customers are always changing their expectations. There are different channels where customers will go to gain the information they need, and expectations will change.
- Influence has increased in popularity. Over the past years there has been a huge increase in social media influencers and general social media use with a lot of customers now engaging with these influencers which impact the consumers decision.
- Devices have become increasingly better with time which has allowed customers to use their tablets/phones to access online stores and purchase through there.
- With the increase in online purchases, this has also impacted those in the retail industry to create an ecommerce website for their customers. Businesses have had to adapt quickly and provide customers with another alternative method of purchasing their goods/services.
What is the future looking like?
The future for retail is expected to come full circle. Experts have predicted that after the lockdowns in 2020 that there will be an increase in physical store visits as customers will be keen to get back in-stores. There will be fewer stores, but they will be far better offering the customers much better experience than they currently do to try and entice them back into the physical stores.
Duncan Anderson, the CEO of Tickmill UK mentioned that “there has been a real transformation in the industry where the popularity of these markets from both a consumer level and an investor level are expected to increase exponentially in the future.”
The main challenges for the future of physical stores, especially in the current climate is consumer confidence and safety. After lockdown, customer confidence will be close to an all-time low alongside their safety so the chance of them going to a physical store is decreasing simply because the majority of retailers have ecommerce sites.
Overall, the past year has been a strain on the retail market, especially the physical stores, but the experts have forecast that it is expected to pick up again from a popularity and revenue point of view, so not everything is negative.
