World Footwear

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Digital increasingly important at the expenses of traditional retail

Digital increasingly important at the expenses of traditional retail
Since the first edition of the WF Business Conditions Survey, we have been asking our panel of expert about their expectations regarding the evolution of different retail channels over the next three years: digital continues to be increasingly important

One of the main conclusions of the latest World Footwear Business Conditions Survey, is that digital channels will continue to be increasingly important to the detriment of traditional, physical retail stores, which are expected to lose importance.

On this matter, there are no significant changes to be noted from the previous edition of this survey to the current one: about 80% of the panel members believe that the importance of general online sellers, multi-brand and own-brand online channels will increase over the next three years (balance of extreme responses ranging from +71 p.p. for own-brand online stores to +80 p.p. for general online stores).

The balance of extreme answers continues to be negative for large-scale retail and multi-brand shoe retail stores but shows a slight improvement since the previous edition (from -25 p.p. to -16 p.p. and from -28 p.p. to -19 p.p., respectively). The views on the evolution of other non-specified retail channels are now positive (from to -13 p.p. in the previous edition to +4 p.p. now).






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Contents

About the Survey
Executive Summary
Business Context
Quantity
Prices
Difficulties
Types of Footwear
Possible Explanations
Retail Channels
Footwear Consumption in the US not keeping pace with the rest of the World
Consumption Expectations
The Importance of Different B2B Marketing Tools
Priorities for Post-COVID Investment


About the Business Conditions Survey

In 2019 the World Footwear has created the World Footwear' experts panel and is now conducting a Business Conditions Survey every semester. The objective of the World Footwear Experts Panel Survey is to collect information regarding the current business conditions within the worldwide footwear markets and then to redistribute such information in a way it will provide an accurate overview of the situation of the global footwear industry.

The fourth edition of this online survey was conducted during the month of March 2021. We have obtained 141 valid answers from 42 countries, 52% coming from Europe, 21% from Asia, 14% and 8% from North and South America, respectively, and 5% from Africa. More than one third (35%) of the respondents are involved in footwear manufacturing (manufacturers), 20% in footwear trade and distribution (traders) and 45% in other footwear-related activities such as trade associations, consultancy, journalism, etc. (others).

Image credits: Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash