Even as cases plateau or drop, shoppers are still wary of stepping foot back in a brick-and-mortar store.

Common sense would dictate that as cases slow down and consumers become accustomed to living with precautions in place, many customers would find themselves more at ease stopping by a store in-person to run their errands. However, we haven’t necessarily seen the data back this up. 

In fact, in May, 90.4% of shoppers would have returned to stores for general merchandise, hardware, clothing, groceries, electronics or dining out, however that number fell to 71.9% in June. 

“I think that people are sort of leaning into the fact that we’re not going to get things to be the way that we want them as soon as we’d like,” said Ericka Podesta McCoy, CMO at Resonate in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “That’s really impacting what they’re buying. When we looked at the top three attributes people wanted from the products that they’re buying in May, people who thought the economy would open in one to three months were still using words like ‘luxurious’. But by June, luxurious was being replaced by ‘familiar’.” 

Read the entire Retail TouchPoints article here to learn more about the specific precautions retailers can put into place to help ease customers.