Friday, December 4, 2020

Tiptoe Around Pandemic Atypicality

Businesses at points along the production, marketing, and selling pipeline have varying time horizons when predicting consumer preferences. Changes in buying behavior attributable to the Covid-19 pandemic led to the general question, What are the long-term consequences of widespread fear of disease on how shoppers make choices?
     To answer, researchers at University of Iowa, Northwestern University, and Stanford University began with finding that such fear results in consumers selecting less adventurous products over more adventurous ones. In the studies, preferences shifted toward Campbell canned soup and away from house brands. Toward traditional OREOs and away from newer OREO variations. The reason is that fear of disease brings uncertainty, so a desire for the stability of the traditional develops.
     There’s a notable limitation. If the less adventurous alternative is associated with purchase by lots of people, this results in a reversal of the effect. Studies at Ohio State University and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology attributed it to fear of contamination from being around crowds. Because this fear can be subconscious, it might influence even an individual’s online shopping.
     Fear of disease also increases the quantity of purchasing. The explanation here goes beyond buying extra stocks of commodities because of concerns remaining from how stores ran out of items early in the Covid-19 spread. The explanation also has to do with the comfort buying brings when faced with thoughts of mortality.
     These research findings suggest that in the long-term, the atypical avoidance of atypical items will lessen. Consumers seek the stimulation of novelty after release from restrictions. We might even expect an overreaction, paralleling how people crowded into parks as soon as shelter-in-place was lifted.
     Purchasing extra items for extended storage may also fade as consumers see less frequent out-of-stocks. Also depressing excessive purchasing will be another effect of pandemics—the individual’s budget shrinks as the general economy does so. Researchers at Texas Christian University, The Pennsylvania State University, and College of William and Mary find that as this happens, consumers refine their purchase priorities based on personal values. The results here are likely to have consequences which last far longer than the disease danger. The researchers urge marketers during disease fear to prove how their offerings support the shopper’s values.
     Among those is the value of safe shopping. A pandemic legacy is that being around a sneezing fit while shopping has taken on a more sinister meaning.

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