Tracking consumer attitudes and behaviour toward retail during the Coronavirus pandemic

The Need

As the go-to trade association for all UK retailers, the British Retail Consortium needed to understand the impact of the pandemic on consumer attitudes and behaviour in relation to retail, in order to inform and advise their extensive membership of representatives in the sector.

Our Approach

Opinium and the British Retail Consortium designed a weekly tracking study to explore themes such as financial stability, sentiment toward shopping in store, category spending expectations, store visitation, concerns when visiting physical retail outlets and the key measures that would improve how comfortable shoppers would feel when shopping in-store.

The survey was sent out to a nationally representative audience of 2,000 UK consumers each week from the beginning of May.

The Outcome

The results of the tracking study were published weekly on the British Retail Consortium website for private member access. Demonstrating the changes in consumer feeling, store visitation and perceptions of the sector on a frequent basis enabled the British Retail Consortium to support their members in their response strategy during a very uncertain number of months for the sector.

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