How are consumers changing their behaviours in a time of Coronavirus?

Written by
Julian Chow

If, like me, you’ve been working in one of the world’s cities and countries that have been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, you have surely experienced a few disruptions and changes to your daily schedule. It’s likely you’ve started to – or have already – work from home, your kids (if you do have them) are learning from home, you can’t go out as freely to get your groceries, hang out at your favourite cafe, or even meet up with your friends.

With all these changes in our daily lives and routines, I am trying to reflect – as a marketer – what this means for consumer behaviour. I highly believe that there will be lasting changes in our lifestyle, both as a result of personal choice, as well as due to long-lasting restrictions or policies imposed by governments around the world to prevent a possible resurgence of the virus. This will, in turn, create a “new normal” where different behaviours replace older ones that are formed before this pandemic came around. One example that I can think of is around the practice of meeting up at a cafe or a bar. Before the pandemic, it seemed like a normal practice to me when wanting to meet up with friends. We’d choose a nice place which could facilitate good conversation. But now, I’m also realizing that it’s just as fun to use Zoom as a platform to connect with friends. Plus, we don’t have to deal with the headache of selecting a venue, deciding on a date and time, and figuring out how to get there and back.

So with that, I thought it would be fun to examine some of the behavioural changes that are happening right now, and extrapolate what this could mean for marketers in the short and long term.

I’ve gathered all this data from Global Web Index, a tool which most marketing agencies use to understand consumer behaviour. The data that I’m quoting below is what’s available for 5 Asia Pacific countries, which are Singapore, China, Philippines, Australia and Japan.

Firstly, at least 50% of respondents queried are spending more time on streaming services, such as Spotify and Netflix, messaging platforms like Messenger and Whatsapp, and of course, on social media. This is in addition to them also watching more news coverage. Marketers – take note: In the short-term, it should become more cost-efficient to reach people via these platforms, although you will need to be very mindful about the principles about communicating during this time of crisis, which I had addressed in an earlier post. Long term, I believe that advertising via streaming platforms should become more cost-efficient too, given that most people who subscribe will likely continue with their subscriptions after things bet better.

Second, data shows that shopping in particular categories is increasing online. These specifically are – groceries / food, household essentials and personal care products. With major cities on lockdown, e-commerce is emerging as an alternative avenue where consumers are able to get their regular supply of household items. In the short-and-long term, it’s not hard to imagine this behaviour continuing even after the pandemic subsides, and we could see more and more brick-and-mortar retailers in these categories digitizing to cater to the new normal. In both the short and long term, marketers in these categories should start looking at how they allocate their marketing budgets and consider whether or not they are investing enough in e-commerce advertising.

But on the other hand, there are also categories of spending where consumers are cutting back on. Notwithstanding categories like travel and events, the other categories which consumers are delaying purchases in include categories which are non-essential or are big ticket purchases, such as fashion (28%), consumer technology (22.3%), home appliances (20.2%) and luxury goods (25.1%). It’s definitely an indication that spending is more cautious during this time. However, there’s another dataset in Global Web Index which indicates that Asian consumers are using the local state of COVID-19 cases, rather than the global state, as a barometer for when to start spending again on non-essentials and big-ticket items. 48.4% will delay these purchases up until they see the outbreak either beginning to decrease, or once the outbreak is over locally. If anything, this indicates that now is a good time to plan and prepare for the recovery period, rather than change track entirely, when it comes to medium-term marketing strategy.

The fourth interesting data point that I’ve picked up on are queries to consumers on what kind of content they want to see at this time – aside from the regular news updates about the situation on a daily basis. The top three are:

  • Films / movies (48.3% of respondents)
  • Tutorial videos to help one learn new skills (36.7% of respondents)
  • Funny videos / memes (36.3% of respondents)

If your brand is able to provide any of the latter two options, these are content directions that can help tide your audiences through this period.

I hope the above pointers have been helpful thoughts for you to steer your marketing or communications strategy through both the short and long term implications of COVID-19. Please do share additional thoughts in the comments below!

Written by
Julian Chow