Amazon Prime Day has become an annual summer event that helps boost online shopping at an otherwise slow time of year. The two-day celebration, which marks it’s five-year anniversary, has lifted not only Amazon, but created a “halo effect” on other retailers, which hold parallel events (e.g. Target’s Deal Days and Chewy’s Blue Box Sale). As a result of COVID-19, Amazon was forced to push Prime Day 2020 from July to October, a decision that led many to wonder if the event would carry the same impact.
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11. By mid-March, shelter-in-place orders were issued across many nations. While each of us may think about how it has affected our own local neighborhood, it has also affected communities across the world.
Mere weeks ahead of Election Day, a global pandemic continues apace, an economic and social justice crisis continues to roil the country and one of the most contentious Presidential races in American history is on the horizon. There has already been record turnout for early voting, however the candidates are still spending big to sway those who have not yet cast their ballots.
Pedestrian footfall in Manchester has sunk to 50% of year-on-year levels as tighter restrictions and ambiguity over lockdown policy impacts mobility and trade. Through the summer, Huq’s mobility indicator for the city shows a steady recovery to levels of around 75% of 2019 by September, however this has dropped sharply over the last week.
Winter wheat dryness has intensified, as ongoing dryness across the US High Plains has limited moisture for wheat germination and establishment. This has pushed Kansas and CBOT wheat prices higher, with the US hard red wheat carry-out expected to be at a multiyear low. As the bread basket of Ukraine, the southern region remained short in soil moisture. Winter wheat conditions in central and eastern Russia also deteriorated. There is less than a month before the southern Russia crop heads for dormancy.
In this Placer Bytes, we dive into Tractor Supply’s continued surge, analyze Chipotle’s Q3 and look into Albertsons impressive grocery performance. In a sector where giants like Home Depot and Lowe’s have dominated headlines, Tractor Supply has continued to perform well beyond expectations in its own right.
One of the trademarks of some hip new brands, including Away Travel and Everlane, has been an avoidance of the entrenched practice of marking items up just to mark them down, with many older brands known for having “sales” almost every other week. Yet, in the face of depressed shopping activity due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both brands launched uncharacteristic fixed price sales this past summer.
According to ATTOM Data Solutions’ newly released September and Q3 2020 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, foreclosure filings are down 12 percent from Q2 2020 and down 81 percent from Q3 2019, to the lowest level since ATTOM began tracking quarterly filings in Q1 2008. The reports shows there were a total of 27,016 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings in the third quarter of 2020.
We are kicking off the Q3 earnings season with digital insights into Netflix and Twitter. Q3 is set to be a memorable one for Netflix. With the controversy surrounding the release of french movie “Cuties”, and the #CancelNetflix trending, expectations have been set low for the upcoming earnings report.
The past week, high-flying CDN-turned-edge-computing vendor Fastly announced that its 3Q'20 revenues would be 5% lower-than-expected due primarily to significantly lower than anticipated revenues from its largest customer, which it had previously disclosed as ByteDance, the operator of TikTok.
Best way to measure adoption is by looking at number of downloads. Downloads, or "new installs," equate to new users. This summer, Shopping apps were downloaded most in China, U.S., India, Brazil, Russia and the U.K. These countries, combined, make up 62% of global Shopping app downloads.
In late August and early September 2020, STR conducted quantitative research using STR’s Traveler Panel. We set out to examine attitudes to travel in this ‘new COVID world’ and to evaluate early experiences among travelers at a time when many economies were reopening and the industry was seeking to capitalize on pent up demand.
If this year has shown us anything, it’s that politics seems to be about EVERYTHING. From racial inequality to the coronavirus, healthcare, women’s rights, supreme court vacancies, or the economy, the upcoming election is one of the most important in modern history.
Footfall to the Pub and Pub and Restaurant sector is dwindling in the wake of tighter restrictions, with attendance dropping below 20% of usual levels for the first time since June. Following a steady recovery boosted by Eat Out to Help Out in August, Pubs and Restaurants attendance had been hovering around 70% of usual levels throughout September.
U.S. deal activity has corrected in 2020 following the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. Looking at total acquisitions by all investor types, deal volume for the past two quarters has retreated to levels last seen in 2012. Institutional investors, however, stand as net buyers of U.S. commercial real estate in the face of the pandemic.
There’s no question that the retail sector has been hit hard this year. Foot traffic at Macy’s, which was already struggling prior to the pandemic, was down 64% last quarter compared to the same quarter in 2019. Like many of its peers, Macy’s has relied on its online business to bolster revenues during a period when many of its stores were closed.
Retail sales may be rising, even if the pace in August was lower than anticipated, but retailers themselves continue to struggle. The number of store closings in the US has remained higher than openings most weeks, bankruptcies are at a notable high and there’s potential for more in the months ahead, including many well-known brands.
The global pandemic has wreaked destruction on the travel industry, with total international arrivals in the third quarter of the year down by 94% compared to the same period in 2019. As of 19th September, flight bookings globally for Q4 of 2020 were 83% behind where they were at the equivalent moment last year.
In our latest whitepaper, we took a deep dive into grocery foot traffic data uncovering many of the fascinating shifts the industry has seen since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. To get a bird’s-eye-view of the broader grocery sector trends, we analyzed a sample group of over 15 leading grocers.
This week’s snapshot looks at the consumption of online health content and services in Europe. Our analysis includes statistics for France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, with EU5 averages for benchmarking purposes.
