Yahoo Finance’s Sibile Marcellus and Seana Smith discuss Placer.ai data on foot traffic sinking at major retailers, as more Americans stay at home during the coronavirus outbreak.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to Yahoo! Finance. Consumer behavior is shifting once again. The latest data is showing that traffic at Walmart, Costco, and Target is falling for the first time in weeks. We have Sibile Marcellus looking into this data for us. And Sibile, what did you find?

SIBILE MARCELLUS: That's right, Seana. So as people are trying to observe the White House's social distancing guidelines, they are staying at home. We're seeing it's for the very first time shopping at the big three retailers in the stores, I'm talking about Walmart, Target, and Costco, has actually gone down for the third week of March. And this is according to data from the analytics firm Placer.ai.

And what they found is that Walmart traffic, foot traffic, is down 6.7% year-over-year. The previous week, traffic was up 18.4%. At Costco, traffic fell 8.7% year-over-year. Previous week, it was up 34.7%. And at Target, traffic fell 20.5%. Traffic was up 19.2% the previous week.

So what that shows is that people have been-- they've already done all they're stockpiling. They have all their cereal boxes, the toilet paper, everything that they need. And they don't feel the need to go back physically to the stores. But, of course, we're seeing that e-commerce is surging as people are choosing delivery, even curbside pickups.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, Sibile, it'll be interesting how that shows up in the sales numbers over the next couple of weeks. Sibile Marcellus, thanks so much.