Shopping During COVID-19 Accelerates Changes in Retail

The brick-and-mortar retail business has struggled through the pandemic. With many retailers closed or shoppers simply avoiding them, online retailers benefitted. That has also created challenges for consumer goods makers that relied on those brick-and-mortar retailers to sell their wares. This Fast Company article, “How COVID-19 accelerated a shopping revolution” describes how fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff responded and offset the loss of sales in its retail channels.

Another Fast Company article describes how omnichannel, “a multichannel selling approach in which a retailer provides a seamless customer shopping experience from computer, mobile service, or brick-and-mortar store” (definition from our textbook, Essentials of Marketing) grew in importance during the pandemic. The pandemic increased the importance of curbside pickup and online distribution. In “Can retailers meet the demands of the omnichannel revolution?” you can read examples of how some retailers adapted.