Don’t Blame The Retail Apocalypse On Online Shopping Just Yet

Read about the retail apocalypse and it’s easy to conclude that fast fashion and online shopping are solely to blame for brick-and-mortar’s woes. But new research published in the Harvard Business Review about retail consumption earlier this month may signal that the way people shop actually hasn’t changed much in the digital age. According to the study, shoppers still prefer to buy clothing in person, and when they do, it’s usually to replace the staples in their wardrobes, not to purchase cheap new trends that are bound to fall apart after a few washes. “People like to buy the same thing over and over again,” Stephanie Tuttle, a principal in Oliver Wyman’s retail and consumer goods practice, told Racked. She and Jeremy Sporn, a partner in the global management consulting firm, studied 1,500 US apparel and footwear shoppers to discover what motivated them to shop, the decisions they made while shopping, and how they felt afterward. Fifty-seven percent of these shoppers were women, and 43 percent were men. Thirty percent were in the 18-to-35 age group, 36 percent were ages 36 to 55, and 33 percent were over 55. Thirty-one percent resided in cities, 17 percent in rural areas, and 52 percent in suburbs. Read more at Racked.