The beginning of 2021 may have a touch of déjà vu about it, but many grocery brands and retailers are now ready to face into the latest lockdown having had plenty of practice compared to the first go round in March 2020. 

Despite this, there are still a number of trends that begun to emerge late last year which we still expect to continue this year. To that end, we asked our Strategy and Marketing Directory Gordon Neil what brands need to do this year to get ahead of the competition, and what trends they’ll need to capitalise on to do it. 

Here’s a preview of what Gordon had to say.

2020 saw many changes that were predicted to take years happen in a few short months, what changes have surprised you the most? 

I think there’s been three changes that have accelerated in 2020 that might have taken years: 

The share of online sales. They were always projected to grow and were already large in categories outside of grocery, but I think in grocery in particular they’ve grown really rapidly. People are more conscious of their own safety so they have moved to shopping online. What brands and retailers need to remember though is that just because people are shopping online doesn't mean the store isn't impacted - after all, items still need to be picked from the shop floor to fill orders. 

The acceleration of people buying local. This was driven by people having to stay local. People began to buy from more local businesses and buy more local brands. That could have taken years; there was the beginnings of a trend emerging before lockdown, and that could have taken a long time. 

We start 2021 with the high street looking decimated. Lots of retailers closed last year – there is definitely going to be more to come as companies started to go into administration just before and even over Christmas.

Gordon offered much more in the way of insight into what brands should look out for this year and you can find out just what he had to say by downloading the interview below.