According to psychologists, extreme situations, such as a pandemic, foster a change in shopping behaviour, weaken loyalty to previously preferred brands and open up to the more frequent testing of new ones. We wrote about this in one of the first newsletters. The data provided by McKinsey & Company show that practice follows theory.
As many as 60% of global consumers admitted that during the pandemic their purchasing behaviour, including their preferred brands, changed. The main reasons for such decisions were convenience, availability, quality and value. In many cases, breaking the supply chain was not without significance, but other factors were also involved, such as the optimisation of expenses, change of the place of shopping, shorter time spent on it, etc.
Moreover, the majority of respondents declare that they will continue to make changes in consumer behaviour in the future. It turns out that the pandemic, and especially the lockdown, were relatively narrow “windows of opportunity” for many brands to jump into the consumer’s shopping basket at the expense of their competitors. The moment the situation normalizes and the “new normal” simply becomes “normal”, the habit will prevail. Consumers are therefore less willing to change habits that have already changed once.
Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/a-global-view-of-how-consumer-behavior-is-changing-amid-covid-19#
