Marc Posner is a professor at OSU and studies the supply chain. He says retailers are prioritizing speedy delivery.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — With many people working from home and staying home, it’s bound to have an effect on grocery stores.
Lori Golden is a manager at the UA Food Market in Upper Arlington. Golden says at the beginning of the pandemic, business was booming, in part because of their delivery services.
“There were a couple times I had to push deliveries and pick-ups to the next day, but we tried, so we did pretty good,” Golden said.
Marc Posner is a professor at the Ohio State University and studies the supply chain. He says retailers are prioritizing speedy delivery.
“Customers are becoming much more insistent of same day or next day, which means the supply chain needs to move even faster, than it did before and become more agile,” said Posner.
Posner also says panic buying, which means customers buying a large quantity of a certain product because of some sort of crisis, may cause manufacturers to streamline their products.
“If I’m a toilet paper manufacturer and I make 20 different types of toilet paper, that’s important if I’m trying to appeal to a customer, but if customers are going to buy everything that I have, then every time I change my product, that takes time,” he said.
Posner says as time goes on, consumer preferences change.
“Demand is shifting in a very dramatic way and it’s becoming much more important to accurately forecast how various sorts of panic situations might influence your demand,” he said.
Posner says we can expect to see some items out of stock at the grocery store because of lifestyle changes at home.
