45,000 customers visited Vinmonopolet in one hour on December 10

On December 10, 45,000 people shopped at Vinmonopolet in one hour. But the pandemic has actually caused customers to spread out their shopping more.

“The busiest hour occurred on Friday, December 10, between 3 and 4 PM, when 45,000 customers visited Vinmonopolet,” communications manager Jens Nordahl in Vinmonopolet told NTB.

Although some peaks like this occur, the trend is moving in the opposite direction: Vinmonopolet customers spread out their shopping more throughout the weekdays and throughout the opening hours.

Spreading out shopping

Although 45,000 sounds like a lot in one hour, the record from the 2018 Christmas is 80,000 customers in a single hour.

“These figures show how good people have become at spreading out shopping, which is absolutely necessary in order to curb the infection,” Nordahl said.

The way customers shop changes almost overnight when restrictions are introduced, according to Nordahl. He has studied Vinmonopolet’s statistics for December and found the following trends after the introduction of restrictions:

* People are getting better at shopping in the morning rather than in the afternoon.

* A part of sales moved to the first days of the week, which are traditionally not as busy. 

* People buy more per shopping instance, which Vinmonopolet interprets as an expression of people increasingly planning and weeding out unnecessary shopping trips when the infection pressure increases.

A decline from last year

This year’s Christmas sales will be slightly below last year’s, according to Vinmonopolet.

A preliminary forecast for December shows that they will sell just under 15 million liters during the month, compared to 15.6 million liters last year.

The decline will probably be around 5% when the month is over.

“There are probably several reasons for the decline: There is greater activity in both cross-border trade and tax-free trade than at the same time last year. No extra holidays during Christmas can also affect sales. In its Corona Monitor survey, Opinion also notes that alcohol consumption decreases when the infection increases due to reduced social activity,” Nordahl stated.

Source: © NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today / #NorwayTodayFinance

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