By Doug Barrett
Jun 1, 2021 | 5:03 AM
Americans are going back to one of their favorite pastimes: store shopping. With vaccinations rolling out and shoppers freer to go out maskless, retailers from Walmart to Macy’s are seeing an eager return to their stores after months of watching their customers focus on online buying during the pandemic. Shoppers return less than when buying online. And store customers tend to do more impulse buying than online.
Three months after saying that comparable store sales may actually fall in 2021, Best Buy released a much more optimistic outlook for the year after reporting booming sales in the first quarter. The Minnesota-based Best Buy said that its quarterly sales were helped by government stimulus payments, a short-term windfall, but it also believes that customers will continue to depend on the company’s services and products even after the pandemic eases.