Quarantine does have its advantages.
Dressing up means wearing pants. You now have a rock-solid excuse to not speak to your shitty neighbor. Groceries are delivered and you never even have to face the delivery person (who is definitely shaming you in their head for the case of Pop-Tarts). The Vodka & Valium Flavor. Your dog is asking “don’t you work?”
If you live in my grand city of Los Angeles, we’re at the beginning of a torturous plague that is infecting thousands per day. You can’t get a drink anywhere and “fine dining” means not-the-paper plates. Economically, we’re facing the prospect of not having one.
I’m watching closely how this is impacting us, and particularly how we behave as consumers. If I were to fully comply with California’s guidelines, I would have no toilet paper, food, water and my dog would have definitely left me for greener pastures. It seems, that the entire country is “just making it through.” And I totes get it.
RELATED: U.S. Ecommerce Up 92.7%
The Change is Permanent
This isn’t happening automatically. There has been a fundamental shift in e-commerce and the signs are just beginning to show. McKinsey & Company has a fairly good read with “The great consumer shift: Ten charts that show how US shopping behavior is changing“
Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is this:
Black Friday shopping in stores craters 52% during the pandemic as e-commerce sales surge.
- Traffic at stores on Black Friday fell by 52.1% compared with last year, according to preliminary data from Sensormatic Solutions.
- “Shoppers are spreading out their shopping throughout the holiday season because of concerns about social distancing and the pandemic,” said Brian Field.
- Online spending on Black Friday surged 21.6% to hit a new record, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
It is a perfect confluence. Isolation + Fear = Online Shopping. And boy, did it take off. With roughly nine months of experiencing the cataclysm that is COVID-19, The data is astounding:
- Holiday shoppers spent $10.8 billion on Cyber Monday, up 15.1% from a year ago, setting a record for the largest U.S. online shopping day ever, according to Adobe.
- That came in short of Adobe’s original forecast of $12.7 billion in spending.
- Adobe cut its online sales forecast for the entire holiday season to $184 billion, which is a 30% increase from last year.
- Shoppers started their gift-buying earlier than ever, as retailers promoted deals in October.
— CNBC