How the pandemic accelerated the adoption of e-commerce

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of e-commerce and the total proportion of UK online sales remains significantly higher than pre-lockdown levels. Retailers must accelerate their response and react to this seismic shift in customer behaviour.

Grocery retailers responded well to this shift in behaviour, with Sainsbury’s doubling their online capacity and Waitrose have added an additional 130,000 delivery slots a week since the start of the crisis. With the recent news of Debenhams set to close after 207 years of trading and high street giant Arcadia entering administration, it is becoming increasingly clear that all retailers must successfully adapt to this shift towards online.

This does not mean the end of the high street; retailers must consider how their stores can complement online with a clear digital strategy. Concepts can be introduced, such as micro-fulfilment to deliver orders locally, stores to become more ‘experiential’ and offer additional customer services.

Capgemini has developed an innovative and exciting ‘CornerShop’ retail concept. Check out our recent podcast on how we are developing the Store of Tomorrow… today.

Authors

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Luke Large

Senior Consultant, CPRD

Luke is part of the Invent CPRD UK team with over 8 years of operational experience in Retail and Consumer Products keen interest in technology driven business transformation

Nicholas Georgiou

Data Science Consultant, Insight Driven Enterprise

Nicholas is a Data Science consultant within the AI advisory team of Capgemini Invent. He is passionate about using data science and visual analytics to tell data driven stories.