Planning a weekly shopping trip now means choosing a window when queues are likely to be minimal and rain unlikely, should I have to linger outside my nearest Tesco branch awaiting ‘approval’ to enter. The 1,500-yard trip means walking for exercise instead of using the car. This means I shall limit my purchases to what my two ‘lifetime bags’ and I can bear to carry, taking care to allow for fellow pedestrians either performing the ‘plague-dance side-step’ or leaping into the roadway in order to avoid sharing a generous pathway with a possible contaminator, there and back… So much for chance social encounters with the ‘man in the street’.
I understand my fellow pedestrians’ trade-off between an accidental encounter with a passing car and a possibly equal risk of a pathway corona-pickup/contamination. Either way, it is not worth the trouble of commenting, it is only a shopping trip amidst the craziness, after all…
On the way, I pass my local pharmacy, deciding to satisfy my toiletries and healthcare needs in a single Tesco-trip rather than participate in a two-maximum use of a small shop where prescription-compounding ‘while you wait’ can amount to a 15-minute wait for fellow shoppers. Incidentally, this partly explains why Boots suffered a 48% fall in H&B sales during Lockdown, to the benefit of Tesco and Amazon…
Meanwhile, outside Tesco the health-marshals monitor rate and right of entry (i.e. face-mask correctly applied, precautionary spraying of hands and quick wipe-down of shopping trolley while checking that numbers of shoppers in the aisle are within social-distancing limits, to mention but a few lockdown-shopping deterrents…). Whatever happened to throwing open the doors of a morning and welcoming all and sundry?
This causes me to ponder on Tesco’s dilemma in terms of wanting shoppers to engage with and avail of the store’s shopping opportunities, and their Lockdown need to limit numbers within the store at any one time. The resulting perception of avoiding any ‘lingering’ in the aisle, means sacrificing much of the opportunity for impulse purchase…
In the aisle, at last, more plague-dance rituals as I try to stick to my shopping-list sequence, without invading the social distancing spaces of fellow shoppers. A moment at the fish-counter, or indeed any encounter with store staff, is made complicated by the possibility of a polite request inadvertently becoming an aggressive demand, given the masking of facial signalling, a condition of store entry ‘for your safety and that of others’…
The same goes for any ‘encounter’ with consumer-shoppers in the aisle. Thus, one of the attractions of shopping in person, ‘touching and feeling’ the product, becomes a covert action, performed quickly, if at all, as it transitions to another gift for Amazon, or simply a lost purchase…
Lingering to browse in the aisle, an opportunity for off-list purchasing, reminders of items running low at home, is by implication discouraged to avoid unwelcome slowing of customer traffic in the store, a direct contrast with pre-Lockdown shopping behaviour…
As one traverses each aisle, one is reminded of shopper build-up at the checkouts, which can be the cause of premature termination of the shopping trip, in order to avail of a short-queue checkout lane. Checking out itself adds to the shopping complication due to the need to observe the two-metre rule whilst waiting to pay. The formerly friendly encounter with the check-out operator is by implication discouraged by the plastic kiosk, cut-out ‘don’t touch’ windows for scanning a Clubcard, coupled with the difficulty of communicating through a face-mask barrier. Packing and paying for the groceries at speed in consideration of shoppers awaiting their turn, adds to the pressure of what used to be a pleasurable shopping trip…
Realists will recognise this radical change in shopping attitude and behaviour. These new shopping habits are the result of nearly a year of Lockdown, and its impact on one of the most ‘successful’ beneficiaries, the food retail multiples. They, in company with local convenience retail and online grocery, will still benefit greatly from Lockdown, but at the expense of impulse purchasing, traditionally ‘up to 70% of a shopping trip’?
Much of traditional shopping behaviour has taken fifty years to achieve and optimise. Lockdown has effectively reversed that progress in 12 months. Moreover, an OK issued by Whitehall will not be sufficient to cause current shoppers to ‘unlearn’ their experiences of the past year and revert to traditional behaviours, shopping or otherwise. They will emerge from Lockdown as either unsure, fearful of their and their families’ future, or if still in gainful employment, will be super-savvy consumer shoppers determined to settle for nothing less than demonstrable value for money.
Any retailer or supplier underestimating the degree of change in new shopping behaviour by assuming there will be a smooth and speedy transition back to business-as-usual post-Lockdown, may survive long enough to rue the day, hopefully…
