Source: https://www.advan.us/blog.php
In a previous blog post we talked about how the home improvement sector has been one of the bright spots in the pandemic. Year-over-year foot traffic to building material retailers was up 26% in September.
Given this trend, we wanted to look in more detail at one of the most popular companies in the home improvement sector - Ikea.
While foot traffic at Ikea stores fell to 0 between April and June, once stores reopened traffic rebounded almost immediately to pre-pandemic levels. In September traffic at Ikea stores in the US was up 3% year over year, and in October month-to-date it is trending up 9% year over year.
As with many trends during the pandemic, the overall numbers only tell part of the story. We can break down traffic by state to see how visit numbers vary around the country. Comparing Florida (red), New York (Green) and California (grey) we can see big differences in the trends.
Florida, which was early in easing lock-down restrictions saw the fastest and biggest surge in customer. These number fell again once cases started to rise in late summer. New York’s recovery was more gradual but today visitor numbers have recovered almost as much as Florida. California has also come back slowly, though not nearly as much as Florida and New York.
The beauty of location data is that it enables you to drill down to any level of detail. Beyond state level trends, we can look even more closely at a specific location in New York. The Ikea in Red Hook Brooklyn - the flagship location for the area. Overall foot traffic for this Ikea location was down 45% year over year. We wanted to know why.
In the map on the left hand side - showing September 2019 - you can see where people come from to shop at this store - the True Trade Area. The map on the right shows the Trade Area in September 2020.
This visualization clearly shows where the drop in customers has occurred. A significant portion of shoppers who previously traveled from Manhattan to Brooklyn to visit Ikea are no longer making the trip.
There could be multiple reasons for this. Many of those who are lucky enough to be able to do so have elected to leave Manhattan and work from their weekend home. Some have left the city altogether. Our analysis of residential patterns suggests that there has been significant flight out of New York City. Ikea tends to be a first stop for people moving into small city apartments, and this September there have been far fewer new arrivals to the Big Apple than in previous years.
To learn more about the data behind this article and what Advan has to offer, visit https://advanresearch.com/.
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