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Shops in the canton feared a sharp drop in sales because their customers had to wear masks. Now the effect has been calculated.
People also shop with respiratory masks: a customer smells a perfume in the Jelmoli department store in Zurich.
Photo: Ennio Leanza / Keystone
The reactions of concern came immediately: as soon as the canton of Zurich imposed the mask requirement for stores at the end of August, representatives of the retail trade expressed their fears. Your scenario: if the mask has to go up, sales and customer traffic go down.
A study of the NZZ You have now discussed the effects of the mask requirement in retail. Get to the bottom: 20 to 30 percent sales or frequency losses, as experienced by industry representatives had feared, did not enter. Economically, it doesn’t seem to cause any particular harm to stores. According to estimates, around 5 percent fewer customers visited supermarkets and other stores due to the requirement for masks. And sales are down about 5 percent as well.
Real-time data from the Swiss Consumption Monitoring project by a team of economists from the University of St. Gallen were used for the calculations. Since the beginning of the Crown crisis, the project has been raising how much the Swiss buy in stores with their bank cards. To estimate the effect of the cantonal mask requirement and to absorb seasonal and climate-related fluctuations, the figures for the canton of Zurich were compared with those of neighboring regions that have no mask requirement. It did not take into account how the mask requirement has affected online shopping behavior.
