Magazine: Online retailers also need to accommodate to the new shopping habits

In January 2021 Reacty Digital did a representative online survey on the shopping habits of Hungarian consumers. Most online retailers have benefited from the pandemic situation, but those who couldn’t adapt to the changes in consumer behaviour and demand started 2021 with great disadvantage.

Since many people are working and learning from home because of the lockdown, several products – formerly purchased in physical stores – have turned up in online baskets. This is especially true for drugstore items: the number of purchases jumped 20 percent in this category. It is noteworthy that 83 percent of consumers older than 60 years bought a product online which they hadn’t purchased this way before, mainly books or health-related products. In the pandemic period it was important for 63 percent of consumers to buy Hungarian products online too.

According to Reacty Digital’s study, online shopping won’t reign alone after the pandemic, as half of respondents said they will shop both online and offline. Experts say online retailers have to develop strategies for incorporating some of the benefits of offline shopping into their business model.

A growing number of shoppers are gathering information about products online before they visit a physical store. Zsigmond Máriás, managing director LogiNet Systems Kft. told: those shoppers who are still afraid of the pandemic would like to spend as little time in-store as possible, so market players need to make this information hunt more interesting with online videos, etc. //