With the lockdown, digital technology has become the “vaccine” for commercial activities: throughout France and in Nice, via new platforms, local stores offer home delivery services. Customers can continue to use their trusted vendor, and the vendor does not forgo sales despite closures and restrictions due to anti-contagion regulations, which discourage (or make it impossible) the practice of physically going to the store.
The first four months of 2020 brought two million new online consumers. Neighborhood delivery services aim to capture and retain this audience. Necessity becomes a virtue, the strategy works, and new platforms are constantly appearing on the internet, while those who started in March – during the first lockdown – are expanding, welcoming new stores that, after initial skepticism, have understood the weight of digital, regardless of Covid: a weapon not only in the opponent’s hand – who sees Amazon as its main interpreter – but one they can learn to wield themselves.
The explosive growth of e-commerce results from two contrasting dynamics: purchases of products show the largest annual increase ever recorded, while purchases of services are in severe crisis, mainly due to the blockade of the tourism and transportation sectors.
The food sector is one of the key players in the growth and spread of e-commerce during the pandemic months.
The growth of e-commerce has involved both giants who have always been active online and small stores that went online due to the pandemic.
“We are human and will remain ‘physical’ too, even after the end of this emergency phase. The desire to stroll and see a product does not disappear with digital, but we will see more and more interconnection. Digital becomes a facilitator of the relationship between neighborhood businesses and their customers,” says an industry expert. “The goal is to encourage individual merchants to create a culture of home delivery and make them aware that most products we buy online from giants can be purchased in local stores.”
