March - June: Understanding how COVID-19 has changed consumers for good.
The events that took place between March and June following the arrival of COVID-19 in New Zealand were a once-in-a-lifetime experience: border closures, community outbreaks, full lockdowns and major restrictions on our movements and freedoms, and the cautious move back to level 1.
While we may have begun to create a new level-1 ‘normal’, these events created permanent changes in all of our lives.
This change has had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on businesses, and on the value connection between businesses and their customers.
To begin to understand just what has changed for businesses, we must first seek to understand how consumer mindsets began to shift.
Level 4 lockdown forced us all to adjust to a new way of living, and a new way of thinking. People discovered new ways to connect, work, shop, entertain, and take care of our well-being.
We developed new mindsets, new priorities, and new perspectives of the world that have dramatically altered buying preferences and behaviour.
One of the changes that emerged, largely out of necessity, was a short-term orientation towards focusing on essential goods, followed by a shift towards prioritising goods and services that add value to their lives.
Level 4 lockdown also brought to the fore broader systemic and societal issues in New Zealand. Public conversation around family violence, poverty, under-resourced schools and communities, and unequal access to education and healthcare contributed to more of a community-focused mindset, and commitment by many to enhance collective well-being.
This collectivism has played out through strong local-oriented buying behaviour to support businesses suffering the impacts of lockdown. ‘Shop local’ was a catch-cry that echoed in many communities. One of many examples of the flurry of local oriented buying amidst New Zealand’s first lockdown period was SOS Business, which was designed to help keep local vendors afloat during this difficult period:
This local-orientated, value-driven buying behaviour is challenging businesses to reconsider their value proposition in an evolving world. But the question remains – will these consumer mindsets stick around?
Find out what this means for the value connection between businesses and consumers in our next article.