The rise of the omicron variant just might have been the start of a new spike in online activity — and not just when it comes to retail shopping. 
Not only did 97 million United States consumers make retail purchases online in December 2021 as they rushed to find a safe way to squeeze in the remainder of their holiday purchases, but 75 million accessed at least one type of medical or health-related product or service online as consumers shifted away from in-person medical appointments to meeting their providers online.
Will consumers’ growing interest in online healthcare continue into 2022, or will it end along with the 2021 shopping season?
In The ConnectedEconomyTM Monthly Report January 2021: Consumers Rush Online To Shop And Stay Well, PYMNTS surveyed more than 2,500 U.S. consumers as a part of our ongoing research into the continuing development and expansion of eCommerce activity in the U.S. We asked respondents not only about the types of online healthcare services they accessed, but also about which types of retail purchases they made online leading up to the end of 2021 to learn about how the ConnectedEconomyTM is changing the way they shop and stay well.
Other key findings from our January report include the following:
• More than two million more consumers shopped online, and 2.1 million more accessed healthcare services online than did just one month prior. This increase in eCommerce and digital-first healthcare engagement coincides both with the 2021 holiday season and the first news of rising Omicron cases.
• Among all demographic groups, millennials are the most likely to use nearly every type of online healthcare service. Forty-six percent of millennials accessed medical products or services online in December 2021. The only exception to this rule is online mental health and counseling services, which are most likely to be used by Generation Z.
• Millennials were six times more likely than baby boomers and seniors to use same-day delivery services such as Shipt at the end of the 2021 holiday shopping season. Fifty-nine percent of millennials and 6.1% of baby boomers and seniors made same-day delivery eCommerce purchases that month. This makes for the largest generational gap we observed in any type of retail shopping method.
These are only a few of the ways in which consumers changed the way they behaved online between November and December 2021. The ConnectedEconomyTM Monthly Report January 2021: Consumers Rush Online To Shop And Stay Well details the full range of shopping and medical services that consumers accessed online in the final days of the year.
To learn more about how consumers are tapping the ConnectedEconomyTM to shop and stay well, download the report.