This is what the consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal (A&M) wrote in a study published on Sunday.
Due to the change in buying behavior, the profit margins in the retail trade will fall to 3.8 percent by 2025, after the margin in 2019 was 5.7 percent. According to the study, this corresponds to a decrease in pre-tax profits of 1.6 billion francs.
The pandemic has permanently changed the shopping habits of the Swiss. The store closings would have accelerated the shift in buying behavior from physical stores to online shopping. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, almost 40 percent of Swiss consumers have increasingly bought online, according to the study. Of these, around half (19.1 percent) believe that their shopping habits have changed permanently.
The study authors observe the greatest shifts in shopping behavior in electrical goods as well as do-it-yourself and garden technology. But also the purchases of clothes and household goods would increasingly shift to online retail after the pandemic. (SDA)