Recreational shopping is over says ChannelMum survey

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jul 14, 2020

The old idea of ‘retail therapy’, or shopping as a recreational activity, may have changed a lot in the age of the internet, but it could change beyond all recognition because of the coronavirus crisis, which may mean that recreational shopping as an activity has gone for good. 

At least that's according to a new survey that said so many consumers are worried about physical shopping that they won't be shopping for fun any time soon.

Parenting site ChannelMum.com surveyed 1,290 parents and found 40% “are too scared to return to the high street, putting an end to weekend recreational shopping”. Meanwhile, 80% believe many more high street shops will close. Just one in 25 families say they will shop to ‘support the economy’ and 50% will buy less as lockdown has taught them ‘they need less stuff’. Some 95% of parents plan to shop only once a week.

It seems the three-month enforced quarantine has left many Britons too scared to step back into a physical store, although the 40% who say they will avoid shopping on the high street are doing so as much from a desire to save money as due to safety fears.

The study also found 73% of families saying lockdown has significantly altered their shopping habits, and as well as parents being worried about going into physical shops, almost a quarter of them are also fearful of leaving their local area. This has led to as many as two in five families doing all of their shopping locally, while 60% believe more people will shop online so they don't have to leave their homes.

And there seems to be a high level of expectation that there'll be a second wave of the coronavirus with three quarters expecting one and a quarter of households having built up a permanent stock of basics to avoid panic-buying if it happens.

The survey also showed that the measures stores need to take to tempt shoppers back include hand sanitiser in-store (expected by 74% of respondents); properly managed queues with social distancing (73%); limits on the number of people in the store (71%); staff wearing masks/PPE (52%); shopping hours for young families only (30%); and contactless card payments as 27% aren’t comfortable using cash again.