In part III of this series, we are going to look at retail and spice things up by looking at trends around funerals, divorces, bankruptcy, and more.
Retail
An area everyone is talking about. Brick and Mortar retail is really tricky right now. If you are providing essentials like food and drugs you are doing fine from a search volume perspective. On the other hand, if you are selling clothes or cosmetics, search volume is down but not as drastic as we have seen in other charts. For companies with more robust e-commerce strategies, that can help prop them up in the short term. But, the cost of physical stores will catch up to them.
Some winners.
Some losers.
Some losers + Macy’s.
Cosmetics and beauty sort of meh.
Unique Trends
These two I did not think of but make total sense. Events like funerals and weddings continue. People want to celebrate a person’s life or nuptials and currently virtual is your only option.
If we dive deeper into wedded bliss, searches for divorce is actually down at the moment. It will be interesting to see if this trend comes back in line or increases. Everyone jokes about corona babies and corona divorces.
The opposite of divorce is a wedding and searches for wedding rings have taken a nosedive. Weddings are expensive and it is not too shocking to see this drop.
Bankruptcy searches are probably going to be a lagging trend. Right now businesses and people are scrambling to stay afloat. Once reserves or other means to stay above water end, unfortunately, these searches should increase. A Federal stimulus can hopefully reduce this total.
Refinance and business loan search volume is straight up. Rates are super low and individuals and businesses are looking to reduce monthly cost and refinancing is one of those avenues. I know this is on my to-do list as well.
Last but not least, a niche of the jewelry segment’s search volume is down, cremation jewelry. This is where you put the ashes of a loved in in a piece of jewelry to be with you forever. A subsegment of this is pet cremation jewelry which is a new one to me.
Not to much doom and gloom in these trends but some need to be monitored. In part 4 of the series, we will look at enterprise IT projects, B2B services and logistics.
