COVID-19 has fast-forwarded consumers’ natural evolution to a point where retail executives may have lost sight of who their customer is and how much they have changed. To put it more bluntly, consumers prefer to shop online, and this may never change. Consumers are casual, and this may never change either.
This week I participated in the WWD Virtual Apparel and Retail Summit, where I discussed our two recent surveys which compared responses from senior retail executives with those of consumers around holiday consumer shopping habits, purchase behavior and influences driving decisions.
The most surprising finding was that while 59 percent of consumers surveyed say they prefer to shop online this holiday season, only 35 percent of senior retail executives believed consumers prefer to shop this way.