Search Results for: european retail

One crisis follows the next. While retailers faced nationwide lockdowns, restrictions based on testing, vaccination, or recovery, and already disrupted supply chains last year, the war in Ukraine is bringing the issue of “consumer pricing” to the forefront. Additionally, supply chain disruptions and record energy prices are leading to unseen inflation rates in many European countries for several decades.

Probably almost everyone in Europe would like to see a return to normality, to where we have achieved herd immunity, infection numbers are controlled, and coronavirus-related restrictions are lifted. Whenever we reach that normality, it will still be a new kind of normal. The coronavirus pandemic will permanently change the way we work, live, and consume – and retailers will also have to find their way in the new world after the acute shock of 2020 and 2021.

The first Europe-wide lockdown in spring 2020 sent retail markets from Scandinavia to the Iberian peninsula into an unprecedented state of collective shock. This was reflected in the European retail industry barometer, the Global Retail Attractiveness Index (GRAI), which plummeted to a historic low of 89 points in the second quarter.