Retail Express
Retail footfall surges as lockdown restrictions are eased
Retail footfall surges as lockdown restrictions are eased
2020-05-06
As different regions and countries across the world begin to ease lockdown restrictions, Purple’s Global Footfall Trends tool is allowing us to see what impact these measures are having on the footfall across industries.
Early results suggest that there has been one big winner so far, the retail industry which has seen a huge surge in footfall, with a more than 400% week on week increase in the US and an almost 9% jump globally.
The past week has seen several countries begin to ease restrictions in line with their ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As this happens, we can begin to analyse the effect this is having on the behaviour of individuals, and start to understand the longer term changes in social interactions which Purple will continue to monitor and report on.
The early indications suggest that an easing of restrictions has led to a large amount of people heading back to shops and stores, with a 443% increase in footfall in the Asia Pacific region, and 434% increase in the US. The EMEA region, however, has seen a more modest increase with 4%, it nevertheless offers a glimmer of hope for one of the hardest hit industries, especially in light of the overall increase of 9%.
With more countries across Europe such as the United Kingdom discussing the possibility of easing lockdown restrictions, it’s likely that we will continue to see this increase in visitors not just to the retail sector but also the majority of verticals. Other notable figures to pull out of the last week’s data are an increase of 14% in footfall for Cafes and a 2% increase in Restaurants. Overall, global footfall across all industries still saw a drop of 3%.
Source: Purple
