Word on the street: How COVID changed shopping

There’s no doubt that the retail landscape has, and will continue to change, as we start to prepare for an endemic approach to C-19. So to have consumer behaviour: with 74% of consumers changing their priorities and shopping habits. We recently worked with a well-known retail and manufacturing giant to look a little closer at these changing behaviours. Our first port of call? Customer research.

You might wonder whether it’s worth doing customer research on shoppers in the field while the pandemic is still afoot. The short answer is yes. After two years of forced behaviour change, supply chain challenges and other disruptions — our assumption is that new shopping habits have emerged and stuck. The best way to test this, is to set off into the field to hear directly from customers. This helps us know how to design products and services that work for them.

We’re not getting into the nitty gritty of research in this article. For more on how to run customer research differently, check out Gemma Stafford’s article: Harder, Better, Faster Stronger. This is about the observations from what we heard directly from shoppers:

thopping closer to home (and being home for deliveries) is likely to stay as long as hybrid working does — and provides a welcome trip out of the house for homeworkers.

“I prefer coming out to the shops because it’s an excuse to leave the house. I shop out less now. I’m not a massive shopper — I work in sustainability so I know it’s good to go to the shop and get it rather than have it delivered.” Georgia, shopping for daily necessities — Homeworker

“I am at home more and have been to local shops where I live more.” Simon, shopping for lunch and a new shirt — Hybrid worker

“I shop more online now because I work from home full time and am home to receive deliveries. If I go back to the office full-time, I’ll have to go back to physical shops but I hope to work from home at least part time so I’ll have to figure out how to schedule deliveries for those days.” Dawn, shopping for wine glasses

For some, very little has changed with their shopping habits, even while the world has.

“My habits are quite similar now. Probably more of an in-store for the sake of sending stuff back. You know, you can try it on there and then rather than kind of shopping around.” Tegan, shopping for clothes — visiting London

“I’ve always shopped online and definitely saw it increase during lockdown. I come into town to do returns which I CAN’T do online. I don’t think my habits will change dramatically.” Victoria, shopping for day-to-day essentials

For those who did more online shopping, the habit has stuck.

“Online shopping was the best thing for me and it’s become the best thing ever.” Joseph, shopping for new trousers

“I’ve always shopped online and definitely saw it increase during lockdown. I come into town to do returns which I CAN’T do online. I don’t think my habits will change dramatically now.” Victoria, shopping for day-to-day essentials

How people shop has changed but so has what they shop for. A new focus on sustainability has made new looks and new shopping destinations popular.

“I think quite a lot (changed). I think also my style changed quite a lot so that went hand-in-hand with second hand shopping, which I think is easier online. It’s a combination of my style changing over the pandemic and the world being destroyed.” Paulina, shopping for clothing

“I think 100% — I will never go back to shopping on the high street (regularly). It opened up many new websites that I didn’t know before, such as eBay, which I really enjoy now. So that definitely changed over time. My friends and I buy second-hand clothing because its cheap and there’s such a big variety of clothes online.” Patrizia, shopping for Apple iPhone accessories

Building customer closeness is one of our specialities and the foundation of our research. If you want to find out more, get in touch.

Jason DaPonte is Managing Consultant at Magnetic, a company that uses experiments to understand customers, helping clients to build better products. Thanks to Ophelia Spowers and Paul Woodward who contributed to this article.

We work with The Economist, Mars, Bupa, Condé Nast, National Grid, BEIS, Severn Trent Water and others. You can get in touch with Jason at: jason.daponte@wearemagnetic.com