COVID-19 has already disrupted consumers’ typical behaviour, triggering off enormous impact in brands, making it difficult for companies supply chains. Researches identified several-new patterns in consumer’s shopping behaviour and way of thinking.
Consumers’ buying behaviour has certain-constant routines which, once set up, they become steady practices challenging to change. There have been modifications not only in where and when consumers buy groceries but in product accessibility too.
Broad shifts in consumers’ behaviour:
- Consumers have to shop at physical store locations new to them.
- They have to buy from brands new to them.
- Consumers need to shop now at a time they are not used.
- Their favourite brands are usually out of stock, so they are willing to try new brands.
- The fear of scarcity results in a decline in shopping frequency and an escalation in the cart average-size.
- Shopping cart pattern of goods-bought changed to mainly emergency supplies, health care products, and cleaning items.
- There are home-overstocks of non-perishables and hard-to-find items.
- Direct-to-consumer services or online shopping at stores offering home-delivery are rising.
- Consumer’s focus is on utility, accessibility and benefits, more than on brand likings.
- Consumers have a high-interest in brands that intermix reliable performance with pro-social corporation behaviour.
- Loss of interest in articles purchased just for status.
- Consumer’s concerns are on how the firm backing the brands is taking care of their employees.
The environment today offers organisations a unique occasion to keep the pace of their more well-known competitors and to gain new-wide-ranging networks of possible consumers.
How to monitor customer’s loyalty
The retention of customers has long been a strategic metric used by brand-owners to determine the recurrence-buying average because huge-effect retention defines a customer's lifetime value. The criteria for assessing consumers’ loyalty is whether consumers are:
- Ready to accept a substitute brand when their favourite brand is not available.
- Delay a purchase if their preferred brand was not available.
- They would be willing to accept an alternative brand.
Providing customer-centric solutions
Industries have played a dynamic-protagonist role in their communities, and delivering solution marks their commitment to such practices. Product scarcities and empty shelves are a collective experience at stores. Therefore, organisations are relocating their SCs and giving potential answers to such demanding pattern.
Other industries have to cope with the pandemic by revising programs to give solutions through rescheduling payments for new purchasers, recently suffering from job-loss and who have to stay at home caring for the family household.
The core of success for all sort of brand-owners is to pinpoint how consumer’s values have changed and to what extent; then, establishing new purchasing routines. So, determine how to offer additional benefit taking a broader-fresh approach accordingly.
More important than offering the ideal product to consumers, is giving solutions to match needs, because the new approach is an opportunity to set apart your brand. You should change your current production to introduce new production lines relevant to customers’ present concerns; for instance, health security, and on doing so, you can attract new prospects to your brand.
Consider exposing customers into an omnichannel outlook; a broader-long-term view of what "place" demand from marketers, including possible outlets and points of distribution to assess buying patterns. For instance, anticipating to regulations on the use of mask, offering them online, or accessing these products on the street stands.
The restaurant industry is a pioneer in creating value by leveraging its supply chains to benefit consumers through offering free-extra ingredients, safe pickups or home-delivery services.
Consumers are experiencing severe financial uncertainty that could go further. This current economical environment will likely be problematic for many leading brands. It is the time of category purchasing versus brand purchasing.
Further comments: smart marketers must be ready to help consumers to engage on their newly- established habits, or those about to return to pre-crisis shopping routines, by expanding the use of edge-digital and nondigital purchasing-touch points available for buying anytime and anywhere.
Long-lasting goods should trim down prices as an alternative to boosting value, rescheduling-payment deadlines, extending service contract, and by offering “100% satisfaction or your money back” agreements.
Ponder education, not just promotion. Few organisations are going on with previous communicating activities and ad spending, but not for long. Latest studies show that the majority of brands would cut their media budget or even stop them until overcoming the crisis; other consumer's brands find on self-promotion a significant solution to respond to the crisis.
Top businesses are redesigning the company logo to illustrate social-distancing, or sending emails expressing empathy and inviting to visit their online stores, or producing product-protection items; all samples of communication strategies.
Are you establishing a Marketing value to retain consumers and contribute to social communities?
Dave Food
Prophetic Technology
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