COVID-19 Stella Uno Malo Retail “Showrooming.”

Mall-walking at the Prudential Mall has become integral to my life in the last 13 months.

“Showrooming” was a phrase featured in my 7/28/2017 blog that described and defined as using brick and mortar stores for trying on clothes and handling hard goods prior to an online purchase at a lower cost.

“Showrooming” was a phrase often bandied about in the aisles of the now locally extinct Best Buy stores; now both the Landmark Center and Mass. and Newbury are now closed.

Mall-walking nowadays at the Prudential Center offers precious little eye candy or opportunities for “showrooming.”

At the high end Godiva Chocolatiers is gone as is the omnipresent Loft.

More surprising is the shuttered Microsoft slot. One would think the onslaught of e-commerce being quickened by COVID-19 that there would be a “showrooming” effect…but no.

Will the “showrooming” aspect of brick and mortar retail rebound?

Yes, but just a tad.

Materialism, oft times referred to as “retail therapy” is the essence of shopping.

Folks like having something in their hands. Shopping releases a flood of endorphins as potent as jock rush or sex.

E-commerce can never replace the intense gratification of physical purchase.

However, the “new normal” of e-commerce/delivery/pick-up has become the “normal new.”

Folks entering pubescence now have never known a world in which an in-person purchase of a tangible asset is the norm.

“Showrooming” will return as a way for retailers, especially clothing stores to cement the buying habits of a clientele already predisposed to purchase a specific good.

“Showrooming” as a practice enabled by COVID-19 protocols will be so ubiquitous as to make the word “showrooming” extinct.

The “new normal.”

Indeed.

SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION

Greetings to all of readers of stevegallanter.wordpress.com!

I am happy and more than a little proud that 2020 is the most read year of my blogs since the brain candy began in 2012.

I endeavor to improve the writing.

‘Gratitude’ is the only word that comes to mind knowing that folks are taking the time to read what is written.