Welcome to Part 1 of February 2020's edition of The Index, our brand and retail tracker produced in partnership with Klarna. While our 2,000 fashion shoppers were surveyed on their shopping habits and intentions in the midst of storms, little did we know there was a far worse storm to come for retail on the form of the COVID-19 crisis.
At the time of the survey with the outbreak largely concentrated in China and Northern Italy, it seemed the coronavirus epidemic (as it was then, it is now officially a pandemic) would present challenges of supply for retailers, now the problem is existential for many of them. Stores have been shuttered across the country for the foreseeable future and many online operations halted as well as the Government insists on ever-stricter social distancing measures.
Our survey nonetheless makes for interesting reading as it shows show the shopper was behaving before the crisis took hold and our next will demonstrate behaviour from the eye of this new storm.
As well as seeing which retailers emerge from this crisis intact we will also see which have emerged with their reputations in tact or in tatters. Part 2 of our study shows which brands were favoured by our shoppers and how they rated their reputations. There are bound to be some interesting positive and negative movements to track moving forward.
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