Post-pandemic retail: What’s in, what’s out

Since the early days of e-commerce, many big-box retailers saw their brick-and-mortar stores as almost separate businesses from their online operations, said Hart Posen, a professor of management and retail expert at UW-Madison. The pandemic gave them an opportunity to experiment, and they discovered that one is not a substitute for the other. Rather, they complement each other. “Sometimes a customer wants to order online, drive there and pick it up,” Posen said. “Other times that customer wants to come to the store and look around.”