The most prominent measure in consumer considerations is whether a store requires people to wear masks. Luckily it’s an easy policy to enact, but it brings the risk of confrontation with shoppers who refuse to wear one. Store owners will need to consider how they’ll deal with this, such as by hiring security guards. Some of these confrontations have gone viral online, meaning staff will also need training in how to deal with such situations themselves.

The next two measures in the ranking could cause problems for stores with limited physical space. There’s not much you can do to enforce social distancing if you don’t have the space, and capacity issues go hand in hand with this.

This means there are two big problems facing businesses. Some will have fewer customers coming to their stores due to safety fears. Meanwhile, others (who may inspire enough confidence to bring customers to their doors) will be limited in the number they can serve due to capacity issues. In some cases where capacity issues are particularly severe, it may not even be profitable to open up at all.

The level of concern for these issues are very high, too. Nearly 50% are concerned about whether stores will enforce mask wearing, while 34% and 32% are thinking about distancing and capacity respectively. These are huge chunks of customers who could be put off if stores can’t reassure them effectively.

That’s the next question. How much reassurance will people need? Will they really not enter a store because they can’t socially distance or pay contactlessly?

For 34% of people, safety measures will be very important, although stores can apparently rely on 17% of their customers not caring about any measures at all.

With 75% of people picking options three to five, it’s clear that worries about safety measures aren’t just idle concerns. Their proper implementation could be the make or break for many businesses in the coming months.

Get on your bike

Using our Consumer Research platform, we looked at English-language mentions of bicycles and scooters on social media from January 1 2017 to June 21 2020.

Interest in cycling and using scooters is at a three-year high. In fact, mentions of buying or using a bike or scooter jumped by 36% in May 2020 compared to average volumes for the month over the last three years.

This sudden surge in scooter and cycling fanatics also lines up with Google Trends data. Worldwide search interest in bicycles hit a five-year high in May, and scooter searches have also been hugely popular over the last few months

But why?

Looking at mentions from March 1 to May 31, we found consumers were buying two wheels to adapt to life in the wake of Covid-19. Consumer Research found 592k social media mentions from people ditching public transportation for a bike or scooter. Another 491k mentions came from people who were grabbing some wheels because they thought it was a safer way to get around.

Not everyone is looking to buy new. We found 1m mentions of buying a second hand bike or scooter between March and May 2020 to save money, a 20% increase compared to the three months prior.

And, despite concerns over hygiene, we found 199k mentions of people depending on pay-as-you-go wheels, like the UK’s Lime bikes and NYC’s Citi Bike.

The benefits of bikes and scooters are clearly manifold for consumers. We also found 881k mentions of people jumping on two wheels to help with their mental and physical health and 72k people mentioned buying a new set of wheels to benefit the environment.

As people head back to work and varying degrees of normality resume, we predict more and more people will opt for a bike or scooter to get around, to benefit their health and wellbeing, to maintain a safe social distance, and to stay off of public transportation.

Get more in-depth data

Don’t miss out on our huge report looking at consumers and how their behavior has changed due to Covid-19.

Head here to find out more and get signed up.

Thanks for reading

That’s it for today. If you’d like to get these bulletins sent straight to you, sign up here.

Stay safe,

Brandwatch Response Team