COVID-19 has struck small businesses and brick and mortar retail stores due to the shrinking amount of business they are receiving. Over 100,000 small businesses have closed their doors due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, around 12,000 retail businesses are expected to close permanently in 2020, an increase from 9,300 in 2019.
Zooming in on retail stores, a larger pattern emerges which has been dubbed the, “Retail Apocalypse.” For a roughly ten year period the retail industry has been bombarded by continual bankruptcies and huge losses of revenue that have shown no signs of stopping. This rash of very bad business is known as an Apocalypse to imply the eventual complete and utter destruction of physical retail stores and malls.
This steady decline is due to several factors, including the rise of e-commerce, large corporate debts due to overexpansion and radical changes in consumer spending habits. Amazon and other e-commerce services corral millions of consumers into buying from the comfort of their homes, thus preventing their patronage of physical retail locations. This trend has only been magnified by COVID-19 as social distancing guidelines and stay-at-home orders have grounded many would-be retail shoppers. E-commerce is fully expected to become the new norm permanently and it is suspected that it already accounts for over 50% of total retail transactions.
This radical change in shopping behavior that has been expedited by COVID-19 spells the doom for physical retail locations. A recent study by Competera, a pricing platform, found in a survey that 29% of American respondents said they would never go back to offline shopping while 43% of British respondents said the same. This will be catastrophic for an industry that is already wracked by bankruptcies and closures.
These changes in spending habits will do nothing to assuage the massive debts accrued by retail giants, it will instead exacerbate them. Thus COVID-19 could greatly quicken the closing of retail locations.
Some argue that the Retail Apocalpyse is overblown, and data shows that numerous physical retail locations continue to open year after year. In addition, most closures appear to be from the same companies, rather than a sampling of all companies in the market, pointing to a more specific problem rather than a generalized Apocalypse.
Time will tell if physical retail can adapt and survive or if it is truly in the Apocalypse, a doomsday scenario with no possible recovery.
Cited:
https://competera.net/resources/articles/ecommerce-online-shopping-behavior-retail-infographic
CIMA Law Group Blog 
