Touch-free shopping is becoming a necessity during this Pandemic

Burger King is airing ads about contactless drive-thrus for pickups and payments. Publix, a grocery chain in Florida, said it would roll out tap-to-pay registers completely in more than 1.200 locations. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, said last month it would start no contact delivery, pickup, and checkout in store.

Uncertainties about the impact of Coronavirus on peoples health, job, and the economy is limitless. And amidst this pandemic consumer trends have made obvious about a long-lasting shift in the behavior of people even after the COVID-19 crisis departs.

The biggest shift is towards contactless transactions in the US, and shoppers are restricting the things they touch in the stores to avoid catching the Virus. According to many studies, Coronavirus can line for up to 24 hours on cardboard and hard surfaces.

When the thousand of the merchant reopens their stores after the pandemic, there will be a lot of things on their hand to revaluate abut their operations to coax shoppers back. Retailers will attract the buyers to contactless shopping by informing them bout the safety and health benefits.

These technologies range from local stores’ contactless payments to the Amazon Go stores, Apple Pay services, to the futuristic, delivery drones, and sidewalk robots getting more support from the people because they have made social distancing easier.

“I do believe this is an opportunity. This is a huge event in the world, people are going to change their behaviors, and a lot of things that have struggled for adoption will get a new push.” said co-founder and CEO of HoneyBook, Oz Alon

The shift to contactless tech is expected because the retail world is facing enormous challenges in this outbreak situation. Online retailers and grocery stores are open and dealing with the flood of new shoppers every day. Other retailers are facing the uncertainty of the future with Nike and Apple having to close their stores. Consumers will be forced to reconsider every aspect of shopping again, like is it okay to pick up a fruit and put it back in the grocery store? Should I sanitize the cereal box?

The federal government and the state government has started to discuss how the reopening of the economy again will look like. How contactless technologies will become a part of the equation and especially in busy places like stadiums, malls, and transit systems. One thing to notice is that no matter how advance the technology gets, it can never replace health professionals’ recommendation of washing the hands and wearing a mask when stepping out of the house.

Source:-news.com