Battle lines redrawn for our consumer good.

By the time coronavirus so abruptly and harmfully struck, those businesses plying their consumer goods trade from premises on high streets, shopping centres and retail parks, had already lost considerable market share to rivals delivering direct into our hands (chart 1). This accepted, in the handful or so months before they had their doors locked, there had been some respite for on-site retailers, thanks to e-commerce sales slowing to single-digit year-on-year growth (chart 2). Then, with consumers abruptly and quite literally locked out of retail premises, e-commerce sales surged. Indeed, the race between on-site and online stopped being a contest, and simply a one-horse parade. Now, with UK customers finally free again to make their own choices over how they shop, we are not surprisingly seeing the beginnings of the move to a new normal in the balance between off and online retail.

To best understand where we are heading in regard to the ‘new normal’ share of online, we need keep at the fore the following facts: Those running exclusively online realised just how much volume their existing capacity could reasonably deal with during the height of lockdown. They saw, too, what uplift this meant for their bottom line. At the same time, those with a multi-channel offering and, all the more so those with close to zero in the way of online, realised they had to have a greater internet presence, ‘just-in-case, or else’.