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Tilers & Trade Shop will be closed Friday 7th, Saturday 8th and Monday 10th April, for Easter.
Tilers & Trade Shop will be closed Thursday 26th January, for Australia Day. We apologise for any inconvience caused.
Rethinking the retail experience
Lockdowns and working from home have had a profound effect on the Australian way of life, including what we expect from a retail experience.
Key points
- Consumer behaviour and expectations have changed dramatically.
- Omni-Channel retailing is required to meet customer demands.
- Retailers need to remain dynamic in their physical and online product offerings.
The new way of shopping
The pandemic is accelerating the trend towards digitisation in the home, in the workplace, in the way services are accessed. Shopping is now done online, and delivery vans are now a regular feature of suburban traffic.
The options for accessing retail services seem endless: there’s home delivery, click and collect, kerbside pick-up as well as the traditional concept of actually browsing and buying from a shopping centre.
But even here there is new technology to navigate like accessing QR codes and registering email and/or phone numbers in order to simply attend shops.
In terms of actual retail sales, the pandemic has prompted a shift in traditional spending patterns. Liquor sales jumped 27 per cent in the year to June 2020, according to ABS estimates1. This compares with growth of just 2 per cent over the previous year.
Other sectors that surged over 2019/20 in terms of retail spending include hardware, electrical and furniture, all up more than 14 per cent over the year.1 It’s a consistent story: the pandemic prompted Australians to transfer spending otherwise tagged to international travel to home improvement, and embellishing and adorning their immediate environment.