Will COVID Forever Change How We Shop?

By Erica and Karen

During lockdown, we did little shopping. The occasional brave foray into a food or drug store was about it, and even that felt crazily risky. Stores selling clothes and other goods were closed, but the idea of venturing into one—perhaps to try on a dress—seemed insane. Watching the shopping scene in Pretty Woman was like watching a Borat movie. What were they thinking?

We entered that mindset very fast. Almost overnight.

Will we exit that mindset just as quickly?

We won’t speculate about when we will feel safe again in an enclosed space, but we assume one day the combination of a vaccine, and good ventilation, will get us to the point where we will not feel scared to shop in a store. (Some stores may do better than others to convey the aura of safety.)

But will we actually go in?

We also assume that we will once again think about shopping for things that are not necessities. (Of course one can debate whether those flats with the velvet bows are or are not necessities, but they are not in the same category as, say, toilet paper.)

But will we actually do that?

What will have changed for good? We have a few thoughts.

• First, even before the pandemic, many of us were reconsidering the positives and negatives of shopping for clothes as a leisure activity. We were coming to the realization that, while window shopping was fun, the business of selling clothes was getting crazy, generating far too much excess and waste, with possible climate consequences.

• One of us, Jane Fonda, decided never to buy clothes again. We don’t plan to go that far, but we do plan to continue to buy second hand clothes. We love resale, and the pleasures of refashioning what we find to suit ourselves. Creative, and fun. We think consignment stores—brick and mortar and online—will have an edge, when it comes to clothing. Here’s a good list of both.

• We were also focusing more on the merits of our local small businesses. We love shopping local—we always have. Local shops offer things that are suited to where you live, and that are often unique. And maybe they do not generate the same transport costs as large chain stores do. We think buying local will continue to be an important trend—after local stores get back on their feet.

• In the early days of COVID, online shopping for food skyrocketed. Some think that will continue, some think only for “boring” food. We too suspect online food shopping will fade, except for things like canned beans. There are few pleasures as great as a really good farmer’s market or food store, and selecting fresh vegetables and fruits to cook and eat. Giving all of that up for shopping onscreen seems unlikely.

• And while delivery is a wonderful thing, especially for people who are working 24/7, and raising a family, and, these days, maybe running a school, the social costs of delivery are not inconsequential—both the hazards to the delivery people and the impact on climate. (We were somewhat horrified by the vast amount of packaging for some of our COVID food deliveries). When we are not home all day long delivery will also become more complicated.

• Of course, as we had suggested before the pandemic, retail needs to reboot. We believe retail might profitably consider what new technologies might do for them. In a totally different context, we were enchanted by the amazing videos created by dance companies who cannot for the moment offer live performances. They reimagined everything. Retail needs to do the same.

• We love to window shop interiors, though we don’t usually buy furniture online without seeing it. Here’s a good list in case we change our minds. We can imagine some online benefits, too. Wouldn’t it be great—whether we were shopping in person or online—if we could see how something looked in a 3-D image of the room we hoped to furnish? Maybe shopping remotely will result in changes like that, not just so we can shop online but so that we can do things online that we could not do before as we continue to shop in stores. Again, COVID might speed up the development of new uses for tech.

So what do we think? We think COVID will accelerate trends that were already in evidence, and probably will put a premium on well ventilated stores, but otherwise we do not see a permanent, fundamental change iin how we shop due solely to COVID.

What do you think?