Do Luxury Shoppers Feel It’s Now Safer to Shop In-Store?

The World Health Organization’s announcement of the global pandemic COVID-19 in March 2020 marked the beginning of a new challenging era. From corporations to end consumers, enormous changes in decision-making processes have been observed across sectors.

For businesses, the pandemic brought about the challenge of addressing the need to deliver a safe experience for customers.

As procedures were established to ensure the safety of both clients and frontline teams, the behaviors of luxury goods consumers likewise transformed. They became more conscious of the safety measures in place at the stores, and the stores’ protocols for face-to-face interaction with sales advisors.

In the second quarter of 2020, we launched the Health Index that defines the level of safety perceived by clients when interacting in a retail environment and provides the most up-to-date insights to luxury brands. The Health Index comes with an Industry Benchmark to position your brand versus your competitors.

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Health Index outcomes are inconsistent across different markets

The results of the Health Index varied across markets and industries. The surveys data collected from June 2020 until February 2021 showed that consumers in Europe (67%) and the Middle East (61%) regions are more likely to feel safer to visit the stores, whereas customers in the Asia regions (56%) feel less certain about the stores’ safety (China being at 66%). Remarkably, the majority of customers in North America feel very confident about the store safety, with 86% saying they felt very safe to visit the stores. (Exhibit 2)

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The difference may be influenced by factors such as the following:

• The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths
• Local safety standards and procedures applied by the respective countries
• Vaccination campaigns
• The timing of data collection for the Health Index, as the pandemic varied in intensity during different periods of the past year
• News and media coverage about the pandemic
• Different cultural perceptions of safety

The Global Luxury Shopping Environment

What have we learned so far through the Health Index? Here are some of our key findings.

Customers are starting to feel safer to shop in-store

Luxury customers are gaining back their confidence in shopping at stores. In 2021 Q1, around two-thirds of luxury consumers felt very safe to shop in-store. The results were significantly higher than the previous quarter at the beginning of the Health Index evaluation in 2020 Q2. (Exhibit 3)