At HobbyTown in Kennesaw, Georgia, owner Mike Murray is struggling to keep enough jigsaw puzzles on the shelves. “We’ve been selling out and have had a hard time finding supplies,” he said. “We’ve probably added six different lines of puzzles. When one isn’t available anymore, we look for another one.” Fly to London and families are whiling away the time in just the same way. Manfred Abraham – CEO of Yonder, a consumer research-driven consultancy with offices in London, Hong Kong and New York – said, “Special moments have really become more important because of the pandemic. Puzzles present a sense of normalcy, that life carries on, even if just within your four walls. Who would have thought that puzzles would make a comeback? But here we are.”

9/11, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic and other such shocks can rattle consumers and alter their shopping patterns in major and minor ways. Are there any common threads to the collective responses to such events? Consumer behavior observers say there are, but they also emphasized that changes in global retailing over the past 20 years complicate comparisons between eras. During the runup to the Great Recession, for instance, Blockbuster operated 7,800 video stores globally. And improbable as it may seem today, The Bon-Ton Stores topped the National Retail Federation’s 2007 Hot 100 sales ranking. Both Blockbuster and Bon-Ton, of course, are now part of retail history. Technically, actually, one Blockbuster remains, in Bend, Oregon, and has become a tourist attraction.

COVID-19 makes comparisons between eras even trickier. “Things that weren’t important and that no one would have ever talked about before like whether hand sanitizer is at the front entrance of a store or whether the employees inside are wearing masks now drive footfall in ways that we never could have expected,” Abraham said.

Because it’s well understood that restaurants, grocers and service tenants perform relatively well during tough times, SCT asked sources to comment on behavioral shifts that affect sales of hard and soft goods. Below are some of the themes that emerged.

Cocooning: seeking solace at home

When the economy nose-dived in 2008, some shoppers responded by switching off the news and browsing the aisles at nearby stores. “People tend to emphasize comfort, things that make them feel good, when there’s a lot of doom and gloom about,” said GlobalData managing director of retail research Neil Saunders. That may explain why sales of home decor items did well in the 2008 recession. “What we saw was a sort of cocooning affect,” he said. “People were trying to make their homes and living environments cozier.”

The urge to withdraw was even more pronounced when fear gripped the U.S. after 9/11, said Tiger Capital Group COO Michael McGrail. “There was a massive shift toward cocooning, with people staying home, buying furniture and that sort of thing. It’s very similar to what is happening today.”

Indeed, retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s have been prime beneficiaries of this impulse during the pandemic, McGrail said. “Whether it’s lawn and garden and things you need to be more comfortable in the backyard or just run-of-the-mill items for the interior of the home, these retailers just cannot keep enough inventory in stock.”

In Home Depot’s first full quarter of the pandemic — the second quarter, which ended on Aug. 2 — comp-store sales reached $38.1 billion, a 23.4 percent year-over-year increase. Home Depot shoppers kept it up in the third quarter, as well. The retailer reported sales of $33.5 billion, a 23.2 percent year-over-year increase. During past recessions, too, cash-strapped consumers soured on shelling out for landscaping or home repair, said Craig Johnson, founder of research firm Customer Growth Partners. “It’s a change of behavior where you go from, ‘You do it for me,’ to, ‘I’ll do it myself.’”

The cocooning trend also can mean sprucing up of man caves or living rooms with new TVs, video game systems, sound equipment and the like, Johnson said. Indeed, Best Buy’s sales rose 23 percent year over year in the third quarter thanks to “elevated demand for products that help customers work, learn, cook, entertain and connect in their homes,” CEO Corie Barry said. As Johnson sees it, the widespread availability of streaming video and downloadable video games contributes to tech-focused cocooning, as well. “Now people have high bandwidth and it’s easy to buy [content] off of Netflix or Amazon Prime.”

Underscoring that point, a Yonder survey of 4,000 U.K. shoppers over the summer found that the three brands that best met consumers’ needs were Netflix, Amazon and Amazon Prime Video. However, traditional operators like Starbucks, McDonald’s, John Lewis, Zara and Waitrose also made the list, Abraham noted. During interviews, the survey respondents repeatedly pointed to the importance of emotional comfort, saying they felt a greater need to “feel a sense of normalcy,” “cope with changes to their circumstances” and “feel connected to friends and family outside of their household.”

Homebound: the practical need for more stuff

Behavioral shifts in the COVID-19 era hinge on practical needs associated with lockdowns, says Jeff Green, a partner at national retail advisory firm Hoffman Strategy Group. “Some of the recent sales growth has been driven by needing to buy computer equipment for kids attending school remotely or to outfit your home office with furniture.”

In an October survey of eight furniture retailers representing 600 stores, investment bank Piper Sandler and the Home Furnishings Association found third-quarter sales increased more than 8 percent year over year and online sales increased more than 200 percent. “Importantly,” analysts wrote in the report, “retailers have a very positive forecast for Q4, with sales growth estimates averaging 15 percent.”

Doubling down on DIY

In the wake of 9/11 and during the last downturn, arts and crafts stores were noticeably resilient, observers say. In its 2008 annual report, JoAnn pointed to the “recession-resistant characteristics” of the craft and sewing business and its “steady performance” in prior recessions. The retailer touted its healthy average sales ticket for fiscal year 2008n the midst of the Great Recession: $23 at large-format locations and $18 at smaller stores.

People double down on crafty pursuits at such times for a few reasons, according to Johnson. “When you go into recession, that means people are losing their jobs. They have time freed up to make stuff, whether it is beadwork, pillows, knitting, painting or sculpture.” Thrifty shoppers start making birthday and holiday presents rather than buying them, and artisans go to craft stores to stock up on the materials they need to make and sell handicrafts on sites like eBay and Etsy. “Your avocation can temporarily become your vocation,” Johnson said.

And as predicted, homebound makers kept on shopping during the pandemic: For Michaels’ third quarter, which ended on Oct. 31, comp-store sales increased 16.3 percent year over year. “We saw a broad-based demand this quarter across all product categories,” CEO Ashley Buchanan said. For the first three quarters of Michaels’ fiscal year, meanwhile, comp-store sales were trending positive, at 0.6 percent. As noted by CFO Mike Diamond, that was a 230-basis-point improvement over the negative 1.7 percent comp-store sales Michaels posted in the third quarter of 2019.

Treating pets as family

The consumer obsession with all things organic, vegan, keto friendly or gluten free formed a clear trend in the years prior to COVID-19, but lockdowns and social distancing have made isolation an even more painful reality of modern life. “People feel more isolated and alone than ever,” said Jason Baker, co-founder of brokerage firm Baker Katz and executive director of the X Team Retail Advisors network. “Someone was telling me that England, even before the virus, had established a Minister of Loneliness.”

When lockdowns did reach the U.K., Abraham says, many responded to the loneliness by seeking four-footed companions. “There just aren’t enough Labradors to meet the demand,” he explained. “It has led to massive increases in prices [for dogs], and pet food sales have gone through the roof.”

Even before 2020, more people regarded their pets as equal family members, Baker says, and they were being more fastidious about their companions’ diets, shampoos, bedding, grooming and the like. Around Houston, at least, he says, the trend sparked the growth of smaller-format pet operators like Natural Pawz, Kriser’s and Pet Supplies Plus.

And at such stores, those higher-margin pet foods and treats have continued to sell well, according to Green. At one Pet Supplies Plus in Dallas, he says, sales from April to September 2020 increased about 15 percent from the same period a year prior. “That’s really what happened back in 2009 and ’10, as well, during that recession,” he said. “The pet category was the least affected. I’ll never forget realizing that people were much more willing to spend on their pets than on themselves, and it seems to be that way again.” One beneficiary is Petco, which posted $3.6 billion in sales in the first 10 months of 2020, a more than 9 percent year-over-year increase, and at the time of this writing reportedly was gearing up for a public offering.

Shopping for lifestyle essentials

Few retail categories have a longer track record of recession resistance than cosmetics. The initial epiphany dates to the Great Recession, when cosmetics sales continued to grow even as the rest of the economy ground to a halt. In a December 2008 interview with The Guardian, Dhaval Joshi, then an analyst with RAB Capital and now chief strategist for BCA Research, noted that sales of European personal products had outperformed during the economic crunches of the early 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, as well.

But if the same phenomenon is occurring today, it doesn’t appear to be strong enough to counteract the negative effects of COVID-19, including a decline of in-person social and business events. Comp sales at Ulta Beauty stores that have been open at least 14 months, including stores temporarily closed due to COVID-19 and e-commerce sales, dropped 8.9 percent year over year for the third quarter, versus a 3.2 percent year-over-year increase a year prior. LVMH, too, reported slumping cosmetics and perfume sales for the third quarter.

Not all retailers are created equal

None of this is to suggest that all pet, craft or hardware retailers are a sure bet during tough times. Even retailers in hot categories could have unsustainable debt loads, low-quality real estate and subpar merchandising and back-end strategies, says Mark Dufton, a senior advisor for Gordon Brothers, which provides valuations, dispositions, investments and other services.

Sales of arts and crafts, for instance, generally hold up in good times and bad, and yet the parent company of A.C. Moore closed 145 stores in 2019 as part of a bankruptcy plan. “Hobby Lobby and the other competitors like Michaels, who we have a relationship with, are more focused arts and crafts retailers,” Dufton said.

Real estate is particularly important today, Dufton adds. “Finding the right-sized box, making sure you are in conformance with the market — there wasn’t much thought put into those things, honestly, for a long time. It was just, ‘Keep opening stores and increasing gross sales,’ as opposed to focusing on same-store sales.”

Top-notch merchandising and real estate strategies are a big reason Costco traditionally has outperformed Sam’s Club, notes Baker. When the latter chain closed stores, it wasn’t because warehouse club retailing was intrinsically flawed. “Costco’s average unit volume is double that of Sam’s,” he said. “You don’t have to spend more than five minutes in a Costco store to recognize the differences.”