In different ways, the pandemic has changed every one of us. We’ve been living with inherent risk in everything we have done for more than a year, and this has created persistent muscle memory that will likely follow many of us for a while. And now that vaccines are being given across the country by the millions each day, we found through our data that the level of comfort it provides to people can be starkly different, and that women, in particular, may not be driving in-store traffic anytime soon. Even as you look across generations, we would have predicted it would be more risk tolerant.
In fact, 64 percent of Millennial men we surveyed planned to shop for apparel in-store more or the same amount after being vaccinated, compared to only 45 percent of Millennial women. And this isn’t an outlier. Sixty-one percent of Baby Boomer men compared to and 47 percent of Baby Boomer women are planning to shop for apparel in-store more or the same amount post-vaccination. While Generation Z showed 56 percent of men heading in-store after being vaccinated, this generation represented the widest gap when compared to Generation Z women (36 percent).
This finding is similar across categories including footwear, and beauty, with the single exception of Baby Boomers shopping for beauty products, where 50 percent of women plan to shop more, or the same in-store compared to 43 percent of men.