By Erica Crawford
Source: www.furnituretoday.com, August 2021
SAN FRANCISCO –– Technology company Zenreach has found that, so far, August foot traffic and in-store visits were up across the board for retail, restaurants and entertainment venues when compared with July.
The company’s most recent National Customer Foot Traffic Report follows the increase in customer visitation to brick-and-mortar businesses from January to the present.
“The data shows that customer foot traffic to physical stores and restaurants has flattened over the month of July, which we consider a reflection of the growing concern over new Delta variants,” Megan Wintersteen said, vice president of marketing for Zenreach.
According to its analysis, the 30-day trend in foot traffic has been down by 2.5% nationwide. Despite this, Zenreach has tracked a steady increase of 52% in nationwide foot traffic since the start of 2021.
Some cities have seen a bigger uptick in foot traffic than others, with Pittsburgh carrying a 332% increase and Detroit up 254% since January. But just as some cities are seeing larger growth in foot traffic, others are exceptionally low. Florida has especially low numbers with the Tampa area sitting at 4.44% and the Miami area at 0.68%.
Breaking down the national customer foot traffic into business segments, Zenreach’s numbers show there has been a rise of 42.99% for bars/nightclubs, 73.33% for cafes/bakeries and a 44.34% in restaurants since January.
Zenreach, with a network of more than 50 million consumers, uses in-store WiFi at thousands of business locations across the U.S. to measure customer foot traffic.
Erica Crawford, editorial assistant for Furniture Today, is a recent graduate of the University of Iowa, with a degree in English and a writing certificate in publishing. In addition to bringing her writing talent to the editorial team, Erica will add her late-Millennial perspective.
