Stores and post-Covid RETAIL STRATEGIES HYBRID

When online retail sales hit over 40% compared to offline, in 2020, many were predicting that one long-term impact of the pandemic would be the end of the physical store, maybe not immediately but certainly an acceleration of its demise would occur.

What we have seen though is a return to physical stores, if not quite at the same levels as pre-pandemic, then at least to similar.

Human beings are intrinsically social animals, as the cliché goes, “people buy from other people” and there has certainly been a desire for customers to return to retail as a personal experience, to get back that experiential element of the consumer journey. We’ve already seen that many shoppers are not happy with the drive to convenience at all costs in-store. They have the option of uber convenience online if they want it. What the return to physical retail is showing is