Question

- how COVID-19 will infuence consumer buying behavior related to their socail class , explain and give example.

Answer 1

In countries heavily impacted by COVID-19, consumers are stockpiling food and other essential items, while isolating themselves from crowds. To find out how and when consumers started showing these behavioral changes, Nielsen1 conducted shopper behavior research that started during the beginning of the pandemic in China and extended to other countries that have also been affected. They monitored consumer trends, as COVID-19 news reached the general public and found out that consumers go through six behavioral stages based on their awareness of the COVID-19 spread in their communities:

1. Proactive health minded buying : Increased interest in the acquisition of products that maintain well-being or health

2. Reactive health management: Prioritization of products for infection containment (e.g. face masks)

3. Pantry preparation : Higher purchases of shelf-safe products and increased store visits

4. Quarantined living preparation: Increased online shopping, decreased store visits and first signs of strain on the supply chain

5. Restricted living: Possible price gouging due to limited supplies and deterred online fulfillment

6. Living a new normal: Increased health awareness even as people return to their typical daily activities.

Example :

During the week of March 2, 2020, COVID-19 got up close and personal. That week, we saw the disease begin to rout U.S. financial markets and rock nearly every aspect of daily life. The media went into over-drive in tracking and reporting outbreaks, and no one could get enough of seeing and hearing Dr. Anthony Fauci’s take on the progression and severity of the contagion here and around the world.

On Friday of that week, March 6, PYMNTS put a study into the field to a census-balanced panel of roughly 2,128 U.S. consumers. Our goal was to baseline consumer sentiment and behaviors that first week across a number of activities that represent five cornerstones of our connected economy: how people shop, work, spend their leisure time, travel and eat.

Mostly, we wanted to benchmark and then track over the weeks to come how much of that change would shift to become the “new normal” — and how quickly those shifts might happen, and across which activities.

Looking back, it turned out to be an important week to gauge consumer sentiment.

For this first week, any behavioral changes were self-imposed — it was largely business as usual across most of the U.S., despite reports that the contagion was escalating.

Businesses were still open, people were still going to work and having meetings, planes were still flying, gyms and movie theatres were still open, sports teams were still playing in arenas (at least that week), and stores were still operating at normal business hours, as were bars and restaurants.

All that said, consumers had begun to do things differently.

This study, the first of many we will publish over the course of this pandemic, provides an important baseline of the consumer’s psyche, sentiment and behaviors across those connected economy pillars while those decisions were still theirs to make.

Here’s the topline for the week that started it all.