When the Covid-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization in 2020 and several countries, one after another, including India, began to declare nationwide or partial lockdowns, forcing many people to stay inside their homes, the digital connectivity boomed.
People went to internet purchasing in greater numbers than ever before as they embraced social distancing. Digitization, online purchasing and delivery, and remote working became commonplace.
The most well-prepared companies were caught off guard in their capacity to be agile and responsive during the pandemic. As manufacturing stopped and resources depleted, ordinary product fulfilment issues escalated to crisis proportions.
As a result, retailers rose to the occasion, not only by encouraging more online purchases but also by embracing new technology that allowed them to engage with customers and improve their overall customer experience.
According to a report published by McKinsey & Company in 2020, the period of contagion, self-isolation and economic uncertainty was expected to alter consumer behaviour for years to come, in some cases.
At that time, it was said that the new consumer behaviours affect every aspect, from how people work to how they shop to how people entertain themselves. These rapid shifts have serious consequences for retailers and consumer packaged goods companies.
McKinsey’s report also stated that the analysis of consumers from over 40 countries has highlighted new behaviours emerging across eight areas such as,
• Work (rise of unemployment, on-the-go consumption decline, and remote working), learning (remote learning and spending on learning adjacencies).
• Communication and information (in-person sampling decline and shift in media consumption—further migrate to digital).
• Travel and mobility (reduction in tourist spend and travel retail, as well as an increase in domestic tourism).
• Shopping and consumption (surge in e-commerce, preference for trusted brands, decline in discretionary spending-trading down, larger basket-reduce shopping frequency, shift to stores closer to home and polarization of sustainability).
• Life at home (nesting at home and surge in online).
• Play and entertainment (Preference for digital entertainment, the shift of entertainment sources-that is from cinema theatres to online streaming and additional playtime).
• Health and well-being (focus on health and hygiene, acceleration of organic, natural and fresh, fitness on demand and e-pharmacy, as well as e-doctor at scale).
Indian Consumers During Pandemic
The world has noticed the changes in consumer behaviour soon after the pandemic forced millions of people to be at home. India, which became one of the top three countries massively hit by the pandemic, also noticed the shift in consumer behaviour and the trend starting from the first countrywide lockdown, which was announced in March 2020.
While shedding light on this matter, Rajnish Gupta, who is the Vice President and Head for India and Sub-Continent business at Zebra Technologies, told News18: “Covid-19 has changed the modern-day shopping experience forever. For example, while shoppers have started returning to stores, many are still worried about exposure to others.”
“According to Zebra’s 14th annual global shopper study, 65% of surveyed shoppers are still worried about sanitized surfaces, and many still do not trust retailers to adhere to health and safety protocols in stores. These concerns have led retailers to introduce self-check-out tools, BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store), curbside pickup and home delivery services at an unprecedented pace,” the industry insider explained.
He further said that with the introduction of these new purchasing options, it has become critical to equip the industry’s front-line workers with the right technology to track every action in their supply-chain operations in order to fulfil orders.
“Additionally, industry leaders are aggressively investing in technologies that offer predictive capabilities, focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solutions coupled with RFID technology to enable greater real-time visibility in their operations to help them make business-critical decisions more swiftly and accurately eg, optimizing inventory, improving time to market, reducing ‘no-stock’ incidents and helping personalize customer experience,” said Gupta.
Separately, in terms of the food delivery market, it was reported last year that the online food delivery market in India is expected to be worth $5 billion by 2020. But the pandemic aided growth and the sector is now expected to reach $21 billion by 2026 at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of nearly 30%.
According to reports from this year, restaurants and cloud kitchens were seeing an increase in demand for online food delivery as people’s movement got restricted in early January — particularly on weekends in some metro areas — due to another new wave of the pandemic.
It was then said that according to many industry executives, the restaurant industry has been staying afloat with online delivery as dine-in suffers once again. They anticipated that the surge in online demand will be temporary and will return to normal once the restrictions are lifted.
So did people go back to the dine-in mode or did they become comfortable with the online food delivery option? To find the answers and to understand whether there was any change in the customer behaviour since the pandemic, News18 spoke to Neha, who is the Chief Marketing Officer at Pizza Hut India.
According to her, as a result of the altered workstyles and lifestyles, consumers adopted many new purchase behaviours, and some of these habits are expected to be there for a long time.
While providing an example of behavioural changes or new trends, Neha said: “We added many first-time customers who never used to order food online before the pandemic but have now become habitual of opting for delivery or takeaway. Professionals who started working from home and ordered food as a home meal replacement is another pandemic trend that continues.”
She further explained saying: “Delivery expansion and digitization powered by AI to offer personalised suggestions to consumers based on their buying behaviour have become supremely important for consumer brands as the majority of the sales is driven by the delivery channel now.”
“Ordering from trustworthy places gained importance during the pandemic but at the same time made consumers conscious of spending too, so offering great value deals for solo, couple and family consumption are key to keeping the customers coming back to their trusted brands,” she noted.
It is understood that the ways the Covid-19 pandemic influences the all-over purchasing habits will most likely continue for the foreseeable future.
But it is also noteworthy that virus outbreaks in specific areas may temporarily increase online orders and the need for home delivery, while in terms of other unaffected places, an increase can be seen in the case of in-person retail sales. But what about the post-Covid scenario?
According to Observer Research Foundation, an intriguing aspect of human behaviour is the return of habits or necessities that have been abandoned as a form of recreation or a hobby. Day-to-day activities in our current world, such as in-store shopping, business travel, dining out, and so on, are very likely to be converted into recreational one-time activities and hobbies.
However, as per this independent global think tank based in New Delhi, “It will be interesting as well as critical to identify which of these habits are the modern-day equivalents of hunting and fishing, to trace the path human society takes in a post-Covid scenario.”
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