The consumer has evolved at an accelerated rate. In just a few months, shopping habits, market needs as well as interactions between customers and brands have changed to levels never seen before.
Perhaps one of the most visible aspects is reflected in the e-commerce industry, an industry that, although for several years now, had shown significant growth, but which was driven by the new needs brought by the pandemic.
Data provided by Statista indicate, for example, that during the week that began on April 6 of last year, just one month after the pandemic began to spread in Latin America, the income registered by e-commerce platforms grew 230 percent compared to the week between March 9 and 15 of the same year.
Specifically, growth by country is much more overwhelming: in Peru revenue grew 900 percent, in Mexico the figure reached 500 percent, while in Colombia and Brazil the increase was 130 percent.
As various specialists have mentioned, this is only the tip of an especially large iceberg.
And it is that the change was not only reflected in the use of certain purchase channels. The intentions, the moments and the drives to define the preference have evolved rapidly and will have consequences that must be considered.
This is what Toluna’s Conscious Consumers Barometer 2020-2021 has shown, which after studying thousands of people worldwide has delivered a series of data that allows brands to understand changes in consumer habits to identify year new market needs and new business opportunities.
In this way, based on this study, we share 10 data that allow us to understand how the consumer has evolved in the last 18 months:
- 46 percent of consumers interact with brands that share their values, 49 percent have stopped buying brands that are not alienated with them.
- 34 percent of consumers expect to try new brands once the restrictions end.
- 79 percent of consumers globally say that brands are held accountable for how their products are produced. 50 percent of them have punished brands that don’t.
- 25 percent of consumers will continue to take care of themselves without leaving home, they will avoid visiting hairdressers or barbershops.
- Vitamins and food supplements are now vital in the routine of 32 percent of consumers.
- 23 percent of global respondents say they will think more about the affinity of a brand’s values with their own when deciding to buy.
- 57 percent of people are increasingly interested in reading the nutritional labels of products to decide their purchases.
- 57 percent of customers demand responsible behavior from brands with the environment.
- 62 percent of consumers prefer to buy locally produced food.
- 23 percent of consumers favor the comfort of receiving their products and purchases at their doorstep.
What it means for marketing
For marketing, these figures mean more than just understanding the arrival of new forms of interaction with the consumer.
It actually supposes a movement of great dimensions where the strategies will have to change in the background, where perhaps the greatest change will be in determining the way in which efforts are measured in the midst of this process of change and recovery.
As indicated by Natacha Lerma, sales director of Toluna Iberia, “traditional models based on knowledge, familiarity, consideration and use, assume a linear framework and a measurement of past or current success. Today, brands have to control their relevance in the change process, develop innovations that adapt to people’s needs by reducing time to market, demonstrate that they are on their side, etc. And for this they must understand consumers to define their needs and how to satisfy them, using data to fine-tune their strategy and clearly communicating their values to build stronger and more meaningful relationships ”.