Using location data to understand how COVID-19 changed consumer behavior

Quotes

• “We often say in our business that if you want to compete with Amazon you have to be like Amazon. One of the strengths that Amazon has always had is its sitting on top of a mountain of consumer data. That is largely how you engage with the platform, your consumptive pattern, your shopping pattern, your search history, etc. and certainly, we believe that location data, the human mobility is not only a much stronger signal of what might be consumer behavior and a much more actionable and recent one.” -Jeff“The first step we always tell our customers is to accept change. We are not going back. Every bit of data modeling you have done and predictive analysis done is no longer the same. Accept that it’s going to be different and that the world has changed and we are never going back to the same reality that we have before and if you understand that and appreciate that, it can be your best friend.” -Jeff“No man is more blind than one who will not see. So embrace that the data can be your friend and help you understand a very, very simple ground-truth level of what’s emerging in consumer behaviors.” -Jeff“The reality is that there is going to be more protection. People are going to have much more flexibility in terms of working from home and they are going to think twice about going into the stores as opposed to operating digitally.” -Ben“Safety aside, and I can tell you as we are hearing it from our customers and the industry at large that if the virus were to evaporate tomorrow and never ever be heard from again, we’re not going back to the office. At least not in the way that we did before.” -Jeff “Companies and industries have learned that we can be productive and in some cases more productive in a model that looks more like this than what it lookedlike before when we all had to be in the office.” -Jeff “If we are not going back to the office and that might be a reality but we still have a strong desire and appetite for convenience. Some of our shopping patterns and engagement with our local community was largely based on relevance and convenience to both where we work, where we live.” -Jeff“I think curbside pick up isn’t going away. App usage for all your local brands isn’t going away. We’ve been indoctrinated and educated on a new way that wecan engage both our local retailers and brands to evolve. It is up to them to engage with us in a way that not only balances convenience but personalization that you can’t do in a physical space anymore.” -Jeff“The physical space that a brand has to engage with me is all my device. It’s shorter, it is more episodic and in order to get that right you have to know more about me and how I live my life is your enablement to that success so location data has a really important role in that.” -Jeff“Everything from the port to the warehouse to the retailer when appropriate is now direct to the home and you saw a dramatic increase in traffic in and out of Amazon warehouses as you might imagine. People are sitting around their houses, boy I need a new kitchenand you are shopping for it online. There is a dramatic increase from both container stores and depots.” -Jeff“I think the reality is that the brands and the places that people engage from a consumer perspective are going to be centralized around theirhomes but we are seeing more activity around distribution centers trying to get basically more D2C products delivered.” -Ben