Retail sales in the United States - excluding cars - rose in August by about 1.8% compared to the previous month, which is the fastest monthly growth rate since last March.

However, shoppers are finding it difficult to find their favorite brands, from biscuits and detergents to pet food, due to supply chain disruptions coinciding with the outbreak of the mutated delta virus, and the closure of many factories and ports around the world.

And the British “Economist” magazine says in a report that, unlike the early days of the epidemic, when stores were emptied due to panic from closures, American consumers now have many alternatives in the market, but the shortage of some goods indicates that the retail sector The country - worth $5.6 trillion - has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

many challenges

According to the magazine, retailers must deal with the problem of shortages of goods, as well as with shoppers eager to return again to roaming stores and buying their supplies directly instead of shopping through applications.

Congestion at ports from China to California has driven shipping costs up to record levels, and trucking costs within the US have skyrocketed due to a record increase in online shopping.

At the same time, companies are facing a shortage of workers, due - according to the magazine - to workers' fear of the Delta dynasty, the government grants they have received since the beginning of the epidemic, and the desire of many to re-evaluate their careers.

This has led to the disappearance of customer service in supermarkets as the staff who normally direct shoppers to the right shelves to get their needs can't be found, and queues have become very long in front of a few outlets.

Last August, Walgreens, the largest US drugstore chain, announced it would raise wages for its employees, a move preceded by its main competitor, CVS.

Target also raised wages earlier this year, while Walmart has done so several times over the past 12 months.

In addition to higher shipping costs and higher wages, retail companies incur additional expenses, including COVID-19 tests, which are mandatory for employees who refuse to receive the vaccine.

The magazine adds that returning to shopping from stores, in turn, poses a set of challenges for retail companies, as e-commerce jumped from 11% of American retail sales before the pandemic to nearly 16% in the second quarter of 2020, but it recently declined to 13% of the total the sales.

Target's digital revenue rose only 10% year on year in the 3 months to last June, down nearly 200% compared to the same period last year.

In the second quarter of this year, offline retail sales in the United States increased by a third compared to the previous year, reaching $1.4 trillion, clearly outperforming e-commerce sales.

Statistics from market research firm Coresight reveal that the number of open stores has exceeded the number of closed stores this year, and if this trend continues, this will be the first time since 2016 that the number of retail outlets has increased in the United States.

The rise in shipping costs affected the quantity of supply in retail stores (French)

Between e-commerce and direct shopping

The Economist report adds that the investments of retail companies in online commerce over the past years have had clear positive effects. In 2016, Jet.com was acquired by Walmart, an e-commerce company, and the platform gave it an opportunity to develop its business Digital, with about 3,000 of its 4,700 US stores offering same-day delivery.

Likewise, Target's acquisition of Shipt, an instant order delivery platform, laid the foundation for an integrated technology network that now extends from a data center in India to all of its 2,000 stores in the United States.

According to the magazine, Amazon, in turn, began to realize that the future requires a combination of digital commerce and in-store shopping, which made it plan to expand a chain of multi-department stores after its share of US retail sales fell from 7.8% in the first three months of the year. 2021 to 7% in the subsequent three months.

Investors are confident that the largest retail companies can withstand the aftershocks caused by the new strain, just as they did when the original virus spread in March 2020, as the total market value of the 3 largest companies - Costco, Target and Walmart - increased. From about $ 520 billion at the beginning of the epidemic to about $ 730 billion now, but small companies, in return, were unable to adapt to the situation, and Corsight’s statistics indicate that during the past year, about 9,600 stores were closed permanently, compared to the opening of 4,000 stores.