Are Main Street SMBs Thinking About Post Pandemic Restart? What Will Be Their Strategies?

Well, the COVID-19 pandemic has made huge changes in various aspects including the SMBs. The migration of consumers to digital commerce is one of the outcomes of this coronavirus outbreak.

This has been quite clear after the tweet from PYMNTS.com. “PYMNTS surveys 3477 consumers to learn how life on lockdown has transformed consumer spending habits. The results are, at times surprising”. Karen Webster, the CEO of PYMNTS.com also retweeted this on her profile.

According to their report, “Consumers living under stay-at-home orders are going online to manage their personal and professional lives. Consumer’s use of their computers to work remotely and shop for retail items. In fact, it has increased 19 percent and 31.7 percent, respectively”.

PYMNTS research has made it clear that more than 29.5 million consumers will work from home after the reopening of the economy. It will certainly make a huge change in online payment. However, there will be no dramatic change in the restaurant business and perhaps, the number of contactless transactions in those businesses will be increased.

According to PYMNTS.com, “This signals that digital-first life is here to stay, regardless of when stay-at-home orders are lifted”.

However, they made research over 437 SMB owners to know what their mind-set is throughout the United States.

Their research shows that the majority of SMB owners will follow the pre-pandemic business model. They believe that customer’s expectations will surely be changed in the future.

Their report says. “One concrete example of how businesses plan to maintain their pre-pandemic operation is that they plan to keep renting the same amount of physical space as they had before, despite the fact that they expect most of their post-pandemic to be generated online”.

Almost 66.4 percent of SMBs think that online sales will create a great impact on their revenues after the end of this pandemic. But, on the other side, 38% have different plans.

Business owners whose businesses are heavily dependent on on-store sales are of the opinion that they will maintain the same brick and motor strategy that they had before the outbreak Coronavirus.

Nobody can properly say what will be the scenario after this pandemic. But, considering the survey done by PYMNTS.com, it has become quite clear that contactless transactions or other kinds of digital transactions will be the future. So, merchant processing companies will have a bright picture in the future.