 We've seen all kinds of things fly off the shelves during the pandemic, from toilet paper and thermometers, to cleaning supplies and PPE. But what are people buying eight months in?
"Some of the areas that we're seeing a lot of spending in, that are at unusually high levels, is anything to do with home improvement and renovations," said Dan Oster, MBA Faculty and the University of Nevada, Reno. "We've also seen a lot of the recreational items become very popular. The bike industry has seen a Renaissance unlike anything since the 1970's; it's really hard to get a bike right now. Camping, RV's, we're seeing a lot of trends that have now had six, seven months to be reestablished and production is now getting ramped up in some of those areas to meet back orders that are sometimes miles long."
The holiday shopping season will undoubtedly look different this year.
"I think that instead of the emphasis on getting people into a Black Friday event, a physical experience, you're going to see each company take a crack at finding a magic formula to get people to buy online during a given day," Oster said. "So they still want to create the urgency and they want to do it on their terms, on their day, where they get to be the star. So expect the holiday shopping rush to maybe spread over a few more days or weeks than what we've seen in the past - and that's maybe going to be with great pricing. They've lot of lot of ground to try and make up after a year in which they've had unusual disruptions, so I know a lot of companies are hoping to move a lot of product this holiday."
Economists with Wells Fargo are predicting one of the biggest spikes in holiday sales on record this year.
"I think that a lot of people are buying through this experience of Covid and it's something we need people to do," Oster said. "We need to continue buying, to keep businesses going. The way the economy sees the flow of money through the supply chain is it's really the lubricant that keeps everything moving. So as we buy, someone else gets a wage from that, someone else makes that thing you buy. So a dollar has a rippling effect throughout the entire economy as it gets spent."
As outbreaks pop up across different areas across those country, those communities could see more basic need shortages.
"There's going to be a number of shocks on critical items," Oster said. "As one area of the country sees a spike in cases, we see the essential items go bare on the shelf again. When someone feels something locally, they run out and buy those essentials."
And as we get closer to a Covid vaccine, the logistics there will involved a unique set of circumstances.
"As much as I'd like to have a vaccine tomorrow, if they did have one tomorrow, the logistics of delivering that to 330 million Americans is a monumental supply chain challenge," Oster said. "So just because a vaccine has been announced or approved, understand we probably have six months to a year after that before we feel the impact out in the general economy."
