How America Shops in 2022, Is Up to You
Did retail sales go away with the pandemic? As a retail sales keynote speaker, I know how well sales go this year will be up to you and those who work in any phase of the retail industry.
Resilience is real
While the pandemic changed many things, much has stayed the same. On the gloomy side of things, retail data showed that in 2020 e-commerce took off to an increase of 32 percent of sales while the non-e-commerce segment declined to -0.2 percent. The prophets of retail, seeing that data, declared that retail was officially dead.
However, in 2021, there was an incredible rebound. While e-commerce accounted for an increase of 16.1 percent of sales, non-e-commerce rose to 15.4 percent of overall sales. 2022 data is currently showing that things are leveling off for non-e-commerce sales for a slight gain, while there is a slight decline projected for e-commerce.
While there can be no doubt that customers enjoy many aspects of shopping online, certain retail industries are roaring back to pre-pandemic levels including apparel, foodservice, the entire range of “personal services,” make-up and skin-care and electronics.
Within the numbers are important considerations to which every retailer must answer. Let me ask every retail association or retailer a series of important questions that the experts say we must all answer:
- Do you have a meaningful online presence complete with social media?
- Do you offer curbside pick-up?
- Can you guarantee rapid delivery?
- How do you plan on circumventing supply-chain issues?
- Are you investing in technology?
- What are you doing to attract and keep talent?
- Customers want personalization and personalized service. Are you thinking about how to improve that experience?
- Many retailers have had success with buy-now and pay later options. How about your business?
- Customers seek sustainability in product and/or packaging. How do you address that?
The need for ongoing resilience won’t go away
We could spend hours discussing each of the above trends, however the overriding theme is one of resilience, the vision to be as flexible as possible to the retail challenges that 2022 presents. If retail retailers are determined to address the points I raise above with a mindset of being resilient, we can overcome the challenges.
As you look at some of the questions I asked, you will see that while some are technical, most are not. For example, how personalized are your products and customer service? Do you offer a user-friendly on-line experience? Are your products over-packaged and are nearly impossible to recycle?
If those questions are not on your radar screen, you may want to begin to address them sooner rather than later – it’s almost assured your competition is already doing so.
2022 is a year that will require resilience in everything you and your industry does. This can be a year filled with great promise or a disappointment. How America shops or eats or finds a service provider is up to you. What will you make of it? Are we resilient enough to believe in ourselves?
Scott Burrows, Motivational Retail Resilience Speaker. For more information, please contact Scott today at: 520 – 548 – 1169, or through this website.
