When the first wave of COVID-19 hit in early 2020, all of a sudden, consumer buying and spending behavior changed. As the lockdown was implemented, people lost their jobs; their savings were getting exhausted; the anxiety related to diseases was increasing; and everything was unpredictable, making the market very unstable and scary.
A lot of people started working from home and making the internet and electronic markets boom, whereas some businesses struggled to keep up with the low returns, forcing them to shut down their businesses.
Now that people are getting vaccinated and the economy is trying to build up again, would the consumer go back to the same habit they had before the pandemic? Well, humans always bounce back to normal life whenever they see that everything is getting back into place. History is full of events that had major outbreaks, but in the end, everything went back to normal. However, the pandemic has definitely changed certain habits and behaviors of people that have and will impact business in the long run.
For example, people are more concerned about their health post-pandemic. People are spending more time improving their lifestyles. People are using the internet to watch shows online, making traditional media shift to digital.
The pandemic has definitely changed the audience, so saying that people are shifting back to their pre-pandemic buying behavior might not be accurate, as the pandemic has changed people. Everything in the world is becoming digital-friendly, and if you are a brand that wants to target people digitally, you need to have a strong digital presence so that the audience can trust you. As pre-pandemic people were quite skeptical about ordering things online, post-pandemic people are quite comfortable with ordering things online.
Although there is a great deal of uncertainty about the future, physiological patterns of human behavior and attitudes are remarkably consistent. Understanding the fundamental ways in which people behave allows brands to leverage predictability in an unpredictable world to confidently engage people, help them realize their motivations, and, as a result, pivot businesses in the right direction, and a brand can do that by conducting proper market research. Conduct market research today with IBI Global Research Solutions. To learn more, visit our website.