The high street yet to win us all straight back
Whilst Monday morning’s news reports and social media feeds were full of photos of long queues forming outside newly reopened shops in England after lockdown, we wanted to know if this actually meant it was business as usual on high street. Had the eOpinion community hit the shops again en masse or were these photos not telling the whole story?
A resounding 73% of us managed to resist the lure of shops being open again for the first time in 3 months.
Queuing, along with other social distancing measures, is certainly putting some of you off:
“I’m not going back until there’s no social distancing. Nothing I want is worth waiting in a mile long queue for and I don’t appreciate the new one way system on the high street”.
For some of the 27% that did return to the high street however, it is about the bigger picture in their mind:
“Important to end project fear and get the economy moving!”
For just over half of those that did shop this week, it was more about a change of scene than anything else.
A good third relished the chance to shop in person again rather than trawling through websites for what they want, whilst close to one-fifth of you wanted to support the retailers themselves.
57% of you made a conscious decision to shop at an independent retailer with one eOpinion community member telling us:
“Support local only, not high street establishments”.
High street shopping still at risk
Clearly quite a lot needs to happen before shops see pre-lockdown levels of footfall again. One of you summed it up well by saying:
“Shopping is a sociable experience. It needs to be free of rules. It needs to be fun and free of fear. Until it is, I will not be doing it.”
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The survey was conducted on eOpinion.org with 2,203 people on 15 to 19 June 2020 and is nationally representative.
Image Attribution: Photo by Marcin Kempa
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