In some cases, such as in commerce, the answer to the question above is probably simple: no.

A bit like it was for remote work. For instance, which has shown undeniable advantages and will hardly be able. To go back to being closed in the drawer. So it is likely that the change we have experienced in these long months is permanent or almost permanent. For instance, at least in areas such as the shopping.

In fact, it is difficult to deny the undoubted advantages of ecommerce. To personal safety, speed, the ability to compare prices, read reviews. Discover new brands and stores, perhaps with values ​​more in line with ours.

Ecommerce and Coronavirus: who are the new digital consumers?

The impact of a year’s pandemic on brick-and-mortar stores is still dramatic. What should have been a few weeks of closures have become months. Interspersed with openings and new tightening of limits. For instance, and a year later it is still difficult to see when the situation will actually return to normal.

65% of consumers say they continued shopping in physical stores when possible during the pandemic. For instance, albeit less than in the past (38%), but that number pales against 84% of those who did online.

But the real change happened in the mind and in the habits: the fear of contagion probably contributed to the push towards e-commerce much more than the government shutdowns did.

In fact, over half (53%) of consumers in the last six months avoided the hours and situations of greater crowding in stores, and 46% said they felt uncomfortable shopping in person.

A trend that does not seem destined to die out with the pandemic, according to the same interviewees: 79% of consumers said they will continue to shop online regularly in the future.

Online shopping statistics in Italy: how technology can support stores

But don’t think that the future will be digital only. Nor that physical usa mobile phone numbers list stores are destined to disappear. Reality is probably more complex than that, and it’s not totally against physicality.

Again, as will happen for work, it is likely that the models that will assert themselves the most are hybrid ones: in which the digital makes up for the shortcomings of the physical, but does not completely replace it because it cannot and never will.

Sure, it will take a certain degree of resourcefulness, but if there is one thing that merchants had to learn during the pandemic, it is this: in fact, by adapting with new strategies and technologies to the changing buying habits of consumers, Shopify retailers have replaced 94% of local sales (POS) lost in the first six weeks of the pandemic with online sales.