I believe you are mistaken. Have a look at the report as it's definitely an interesting read. From what I understand, retail was the majority of the volume.
It wasn't totally clear to me if those were all physical purchases or not. However, it would be shocking if in-store sales weren't markedly down. I basically haven't been in a store casually to browse for over a year and I doubt that's unusual.
I would’ve expected a bigger drop. But these numbers include online sales.
I suppose some of the drop is countered by people being less price-conscious: e.g. going to 1 grocery store instead of 3 to capture all the sales. Or buying more expensive TP because that’s all thats available.
Fair enough and consumers are rewarded for carefully researched shopping. However, many of the days we compared were specifically billed as major "sale" days and so I, at least, found the price inflation disconcerting.
(also seems kinda weird to measure this with black Friday sales... Which could simply be an indicator of people trying to get further with the money they have by spending less during non sale periods. But I assume there's more evidence than what's at the top of the article.)
That's good to hear. My numbers were from some retailers I knew. Their biz must have been pretty skewed towards the holiday. Thanks for digging out that report!
The problem is that much of the buy demand seems to be on the retail side. But the retailers have shut that down, so you're left selling to a portion of the market that has the lease demand for what you're selling.
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