Our consumer behavior has changed significantly in the course of the corona pandemic. During the lockdown, regular shopping in local retail was no longer possible for months – new forms of shopping such as Click & Collect were born. The retailers were only able to open their shops again when the incidence figures dropped. As a result, consumers are now shopping significantly more online than they did before the pandemic. And another development can be observed: shoppers are increasingly making hybrid purchases. Criteo came to this conclusion in its 2021 study “Shopper Story 2022 Germany”, which the technology service provider surveyed 1011 consumers nationwide. In addition to new types of shopping such as Click & Collect, many first find out about products online, but then buy them in brick-and-mortar stores (web rooming). Or vice versa: you buy items on the internet after looking at them in the store (show rooming). More than three quarters of German consumers (77 percent) practice so-called web rooming, while 71 percent show rooming. According to Criteo, the younger age groups of Generation Z and Millennials in particular are increasingly displaying this hybrid shopping behavior.
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“The demands and expectations of consumers in Germany are changing fundamentally. They are using digital services more and more frequently – fueled not least by the corona pandemic – and they are using them differently than in 2019,” comments Corinna Hohenleitner, Managing Director Roof at Criteo , the results of the study. The mobile phone is now the lynchpin when shopping in brick-and-mortar retail. For retailers, this means developing fine antennas for these trends and coordinating stationary and digital services accordingly. “It’s not just about giving consumers the shopping experience they want, but more importantly, making sure they’re actually buying from you,” she says. Nevertheless, the joy of shopping in stationary retail has remained almost unchanged despite the pandemic: 56 percent of those surveyed said they like shopping in stationary retail when they have the time. This is only three percentage points less than in the pre-pandemic year 2019. The most common reasons given for shopping in the store are the immediate availability of the products (43 percent), the convenient location (41 percent) and discounts and special offers (41 percent). Surprisingly, for only 29 percent of those surveyed, the expert staff that is so important for stationary retail plays a role. In 2019, this was still a good reason for 43 percent of those surveyed to shop locally. hor–
