At least that’s according to a new survey that said so many consumers are worried about physical shopping that they won’t be shopping for fun any time soon.Parenting site ChannelMum.com surveyed 1,290 parents and found 40% “are too scared to return to the high street, putting an end to weekend recreational shopping”. Meanwhile, 80% believe many more high street shops will close. Just one in 25 families say they will shop to ‘support the economy’ and 50% will buy less as lockdown has taught them ‘they need less stuff’. Some 95% of parents plan to shop only once a week.

It seems the three-month enforced quarantine has left many Britons too scared to step back into a physical store, although the 40% who say they will avoid shopping on the high street are doing so as much from a desire to save money as due to safety fears.The study also found 73% of families saying lockdown has significantly altered their shopping habits, and as well as parents being worried about going into physical shops, almost a quarter of them are also fearful of leaving their local area. This has led to as many as two in five families doing all of their shopping locally, while 60% believe more people will shop online so they don’t have to leave their homes.And there seems to be a high level of expectation that there’ll be a second wave of the coronavirus with three quarters expecting one and a quarter of households having built up a permanent stock of basics to avoid panic-buying if it happens.The survey also showed that the measures stores need to take to tempt shoppers back include hand sanitiser in-store (expected by 74% of respondents); properly managed queues with social distancing (73%); limits on the number of people in the store (71%); staff wearing masks/PPE (52%); shopping hours for young families only (30%); and contactless card payments as 27% aren’t comfortable using cash again.