PayPal co-founder Max Levchin believes that after the pandemic, many people will stop thinking about shopping as going to offline stores. Stores will remain but fundamentally change their role, becoming additional options in convenient and fast online shopping, writes Retail.ru.
According to Levchin, in the near future, businesses will have to rethink store management, as customers will not want to return to crowded places and lose the convenience of online shopping after the coronavirus. It is assumed by NIX Solutions that one of the most popular formats for making purchases will be an online order with the subsequent delivery of goods at the pick-up point. This format requires investment in software that equips small retail chains with the same technology and infrastructure as Apple and Amazon.
Currently, retailers have faced the task of finding a balance between the convenience of shopping with the direct presence of a person in the trading floor and the safety of shopping on the Internet. To do this, companies will have to look for new ways to use real estate, says Levchin. According to him, the pandemic accelerated changes in the industry, which began long ago.
Perhaps in the near future grocery chains and clothing stores will begin to use stores more as places for receiving and issuing orders than as places for shopping, and small retailers will have to invest in new technologies to combine online and offline.