COVID-19 created significant challenges for retailing in New Zealand in 2020. The alert level four lockdown between April and May halted in-store trading for non-essential retail businesses, leading to long term changes as consumers started purchasing online and retailers worked on building digital capabilities. Retailing in New Zealand...
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was a year of extremes – both in growth and contraction. Regarding store-based retailing, non-grocery specialists saw the largest contraction in value sales. Department stores fared the worst, due to such formats being enclosed spaces which attract a high number of customers, thus consumers avoided such spaces...
COVID-19 had a more significant economic impact on the UK than other Western European countries. In response to the pandemic, the UK Government imposed national lockdowns, which lasted for more than four months in 2020. The lockdowns not only had an impact on consumers’ lifestyles, and thus, their shopping habits, but also restricted the operations...
The Polish government introduced lockdown measures when Coronavirus (COVID-19) emerged, including the closure of all non-essential offline stores between 15 March and 4 May 2020. In Poland, measures to restrict the number of clients allowed in stores (a limit of three customers per checkout and later one customer per 15 sq m) were implemented...
Lockdown restrictions led to a surge in unemployment. The economic impact of the pandemic was exacerbated by a sharp decline in the price of crude oil – Nigeria’s main export – which led to a decline in the foreign-exchange value of the naira, resulting in increased import costs. The early months of the pandemic also saw significant supply-chain...
In general, thanks to Vietnamese government efforts, Vietnam has controlled COVID-19 well. As such, the country did not have a long national lockdown (1-15 April). During the lockdown, all shops had to close except grocery retailers. Delivery service was allowed in almost all places, except Da Nang city. Retailing in Vietnam report...
When lockdown began in Argentina on March 20, all grocery outlets in Argentina remained open because they were considered an essential service, and there was no restriction on the number of times per week or per day that people could leave their homes to do their shopping. However, Argentinians naturally preferred to shop close to their homes...
The Algerian economy was hit by a double whammy in 2020 – COVID-19 and plummeting oil prices. Algeria is highly dependent on oil exports and this led to a devaluation of the dinar and a general increase in inflation. This in turn led to lower disposable incomes and resulted in an overall small decline in current value sales in retailing in...
Store-based retailing was heavily affected by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, driven by strong double-digits declines in current value sales of a number of non-grocery specialists. These retailers were considered non-essential and remained closed during mandated quarantine closures. The performance of grocery retailers, and non-grocery...
The COVID-19 pandemic first arrived in Mexico in February 2020, resulting in the government attempting to curb the spread of the disease through a lockdown and subsequently all non-essential businesses were closed in April and May, which had a large negative impact on retail in the country. Retailing in Mexico report offers insight...