Matthew Shay, National Retail Federation (NRF) President and CEO, shared his thoughts on Fox Business about upcoming retail earnings and changing consumer behaviors.
Shay expressed strong confidence in consumer’s ability to help us bounce back from the current pandemic and noted a positive outlook for the future of brick-and-mortar retail. The following quotes are Shay’s perspective on consumer shopping habits today:
“There doesn’t seem to be any data that supports any correlation between consumer behavior and what happens in the commercial real estate side.”
“The takeaway is that we saw very good numbers last week, 2.7% growth in retail year-over-year – consumers are strong, interest rates are incredibly low. People are spending, let’s keep the economy open and let’s keep moving forward.”
“The unemployment rate is already back down to 10%, which is where we were in 2010 after the great recession, and we saw growth for the straight decade as consumers pulled us forward. As we go through some of these reorganizations this week there will be some winners and losers, but I would look for some good numbers this week among retailers.”
“In general, about 90% of retail sales happen in stores – the first quarter of that dropped to 88%, second quarter was 83%. So people are back in stores as we reopen the economy. Online sales usually hovers around 15% of total sales, and as we went into the shutdown it was close to 20%, now it has settled back down to 16%.”
Source: Fox Business Video – NRF President
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