Aaah, shopping! That unhurried return to our hunter/gatherer roots, as we wandered the aisles looking for this, picking up that, and communing at our leisure with our fellow-tribesmen. Alas, no more, of course – we scurry the aisles anxiously, eyeing other shoppers with suspicion, as carriers of contagion or cunning competitors for that last roll of toilet paper, while mentally stretching our already thin household budgets over the next three aisles to the till point. How, then, to keep customers calm so that they carry on shopping? Enter sensory shopping, according to Aussie outfit Mood Media. A store that smells newly-disinfected, for example, is one in which shoppers will bide their time and fill their baskets. Calmer, quieter music is another plus. Under normal circumstances, you’d want to activate their sense of touch, too, but now not so much – which is why visual merchandising becomes more important at times like this. Sensory marketing – when shoppers have cash – has been shown to increase sales by up to +10%.

Comment: Time for a rethink of the store. Get creative, people. Or, get creative people.

A trading update from Woolworths, and predictably it’s not the breezy affair we came to expect of the Dapper One back in the long-forgotten days of the consumer boom. But it’s not without its bright spots. So while overall sales declined -0.1% from last year, online sales of food grew a massive +87.8% in the second half, and fashion, beauty and home by +41.3%. The decline in sales was driven by the closure of all non-food stores at home under COVID-19, as well as the decline in foot traffic in the rest. In Australia, David Jones recorded a decline of -6.3% for the period, and Country Road -14.3%. Other news from AUS is that the Group has just successfully flogged its Bourke Street Menswear store for a no-doubt-welcome AU$121m. And as mentioned, a couple of silver linings globally. Sales ticked up to the tune of +4.7% in the last nine weeks of the period, after a -17.0% decline in the previous eight weeks.

Comment: The phenomenal success of online sales presages well for Woolies’ performance in omnichannel when normal trading returns.

There was a time – how long ago it all seems now – that Choppies not releasing its interims was an industry-shaking story. Well, those results are out now, and quite frankly, what was all the fuss about? Revenue, it turned out was down -17.5% for the six months through December, with trading profit declining -15% to R95.83m. The business, you will recall, has operations in its home turf of Botswana, and in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia, but sold and closed its businesses in South Africa and the tricky East African geographies of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. In Botswana itself, things were peachy, with sales up +6.6%. The reason for the decline in profitability, said Choppies, was the weakening of the Zimbabwean dollar against the Pula. No mention was made of the board-level shenanigans which either resulted from the impasse in releasing results, or caused it, depending on who you speak to.

Comment: This time six months ago, we’d all but given up on Choppies. Seems there’s life in the business yet.

In Dear Old Blighty, Walmart is considering flogging Asda, or at least a stake therein, for cold hard cash to one of a “small number of third-party investors” as they’re coyly called. Last year, you might recall, Asda made a play for rival Sainsbury’s, but was duly bounced by the competition authorities. A disappointed Walmart then investigated either listing the business or selling a majority chunk of it, and were pretty far along the latter path when COVID-19 intervened. Now, apparently, everything is back on track. No word of who the interested parties might be though. Over in the US, Walmart is showing its gratitude to new and existing staff who have stepped in to stock shelves and clean stores over the pandemic, announcing a $428m third round of bonuses for staff, who will receive somewhere between $150 and $300 each. The business is also edging towards profitable growth in its online offering, another side-effect of the pandemic.

Comment: : In a landscape where retailers of every stripe seem to be failing daily, Walmart is emerging a clear winner from this crisis.

Some pretty Umajor news from London, where Unilever has just become the UK’s biggest listed company. Despite underlying sales declining -0.3% in the second quarter – its first quarterly decline since ’05 – analysts had predicted -4.3%, and relieved punters snaffled up the share to the tune of an +8% rise in the price. The specifics of sales across Unilever’s comprehensive range provide a snapshot of consumer priorities over the pandemic: Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream and Hellman’s Mayo up as consumers eat in and stock up on comfort food; cleaning products like Cif and Domestos up as worried householders scrub every available surface, including, in the early days, the groceries; personal care down as people let themselves go and learnt how to switch off the video on Zoom. There’s also a bit more clarity on tea: they are indeed spinning off the business globally, with a view to concluding this process by the end of 2021, but will retain its interests in India and Indonesia and its ready-to-drink tea JVs.

Comment: Amazing work from Le Grand Bleu in this challenging ambit. And mayo really does go with anything.

That sober arbiter of the trends that drive our spending, Nielsen, have sharpened their pencils and done the numbers on the travails of the booze industry these past months, and it’s not a pretty sight, let us assure you of that. For starters: the first nine weeks of lockdown cost the industry R20bn, or R304m per day – equivalent to 17% of annual sales. With the second lockdown now in place, it’s expected that monthly losses will total R10bn. The brief hiatus between the two bans saw sales soar +126% in the first week of June, and +61% in the second – although the third week limped in at +0.5% up YoY as punters reached the limits of their spending power. And what they were buying is also indicative of a certain caution in their mind-set, with “longer-lasting bottles” such as those containing wine and spirits taking up 78% of sales. Gin, vodka, brandy and whiskey were the overall winners, and mostly of the sort that comes in at R200 or less per bottle. The second prohibition, coming as suddenly as it did, has left both consumers and the industry high and dry. In a worst case scenario, say Nielsen, up to 40% of annual sales could be eradicated from the sector this year.

Comment: Bleak. And indicative of a certain lack of foresight and coordination in the overall approach.

According to no less a personage than FNB CEO Jacques Celliers, the financial discipline many of us have discovered during lockdown – whether necessary or cautiously discretionary – is not what the dear old economy needs right now. As tourism goes into deep hibernation and foreign investment slows, we need to be circulating whatever rands we possess among ourselves. “An economy needs trade,” says Mnr Celliers, succinctly. “Whether it’s a spaza shop, at Woolies (Woolworths) or at a restaurant, we need trade. If we all sit at home, you will have a much smaller economy," he explains. Last week’s CPI of 2.1% is a sobering reminder of the softness in our economy right now, with some experts concerned that we might be headed into deflationary territory.

Comment: Bottom line: we cannot save our way to recovery. But we aren’t in much of a spending mood either, and many of us have the wherewithal for neither.