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The experience in Germany suggests a sobering start to the first week of shopping after closing: out of curiosity, much of the audience initially came to town, but then stayed home. Switzerland’s figures are also troubling.
Workers paste a distance instruction in front of a box at the Jelmoli department store in Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich
“With great vigor” merchants prepared for Monday, the director of the trade association Hans-Ulrich Bigler told NZZ this week. In fact, there is high hope after the industry has pushed and fought for this step for weeks. But despite the fact that it is the first time in two months that it is no longer only possible to buy groceries, neither tomorrow nor in the next few days the great fever can be expected. In any case, this is indicated by analyzes of various German cities, in which many stores have reopened since April 20. However, it is based on a similar curve for Switzerland, explains Mathias F. Böhm, Managing Director of “Pro Innenstadt Basel”.
For example, the Königsallee in Düsseldorf, which can best be compared to the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich: Monday was disappointing there. A little more audience was counted (7007 passers-by) than the same day the previous year (6657), but at that time it was Easter Monday, when the stores were closed. The frequency already sank on Tuesday: only 6,221 passers-by were measured in Königsallee, more than 10,000 fewer people than in the previous year (16,394). Mood did not recover throughout the week. It was just Saturday that almost 10,000 people flocked to the city again. But that’s also less than half the figures from the previous year.
In Germany only Monday was good
The figures were compiled by Hystreet, a company that specializes in measuring pedestrian frequencies in city centers. According to the company, Düsseldorf is not an isolated case. The pattern is the same everywhere: Monday generally turned out to be the busiest business day of the week. Thereafter, purchasing interest decreased until Saturday. Altogether, the frequency in 17 cities only reached around 39 percent of the annual average for 2019. In the second week after the reopening, the image in Germany changed only slightly.
The strong Monday is probably due to the curiosity of many visitors after closing: The walk means variety: “Many people will be satisfied when they have experienced it again and may not go to the city regularly,” says Mathias F. Bohm. Also for Switzerland , he expects the visitor frequency to settle at around 50 percent of the usual values at the moment. One should not forget the human factor, explains Böhm. “The situation is new for everyone: for business owners, employees, and customers.” There were questions that have never been asked. This affects not only protection concepts, but also storage or logistics. “Looked at this way, it doesn’t help anyone if cities are simply overrun in the early days.”
New online channels are expensive
In fact, pedestrian frequencies are currently less important than in normal times. The highest possible density of people is currently undesirable because the crown epidemic must remain under control. For this reason, many stores have established online stores in recent weeks that have worked well. They want to keep this channel, Böhm explains. However, this means an additional burden compared to the time before Corona. “Running a functioning online store is like opening another branch,” says Böhm. In many stores, however, it is more than questionable whether the necessary sales can be achieved.
According to the Börsenblatt des Deutschen Buchhandels, bookshops in Germany had averaged 81.5 percent of their pre-closing sales after closing. However, such single-industry figures hardly make sense, especially since Seco was characterized by extremely bad consumer sentiment last week: Swiss consumer sentiment fell from −9 points in January to −39 points. El Seco wrote in a press release that the level of the financial and economic crisis in 2008 and 2009 was significantly lower: “Only in the early 1990s did consumer sentiment acquire equally low values in the wake of the housing crisis.” At that time, the Swiss economy suffered a prolonged recession with a sharp rise in unemployment.
Travelers stay at home
However, inland cities are likely to be affected not only by poor consumer sentiment. The fact that many people still work in the home office also has a dampening effect on customer frequencies, as commercial director Hans-Ulrich Bigler told NZZ. “There are still a lot of travelers who have previously made purchases on the way to or from work.” Also, there are no events that draw the public to the city center. Dropper systems in front of entrances and fear of infection should also put pressure on the desire to buy.
However, Böhm cautions against deriving too much from the numbers of the early days. The situation is unpredictable: «The first two days say nothing about the rest of the week. And the first week says nothing about the time after that. ” Only one thing is certain, as Bigler points out: “It will be a while until we have normal conditions.”
