albert Chan
- Brick-and-mortar retail continues to see severely reduced shopper visits amid the pandemic. Although we saw an improving traffic trend over the first three weeks of November, we saw a deeper decline of 41.3% in the fourth week, which included Black Friday weekend.
- The deep decline was in the context of sustained high levels of Covid-19 infection and hospitalizations, suggested restrictions on holiday travel and further potential restrictions in some states.
- Home retailers consistently saw less severe declines in traffic through the month than apparel, footwear and jewelry retailers.
- We are on course for a digital December as physical store traffic remains deeply negative and online demand is highly elevated. We expect digital sales across nonfood retail to rise in the low-30s-percent range, totaling $220 billion, or 27.6% of all nonfood retail sales, in the holiday quarter. We continue to expect an approximate one-third (33.5%) rise in total holiday-quarter online retail sales.
