By:  Gemma Newton, Head of Data & Insight Team

The pandemic has been happening for almost two years, and with it, human behaviour has had no choice but to evolve so that we could adapt to changes forced upon us. We want to examine some of these evolved behaviours, especially through the lens of consumer lifestyle.

We’ll start off with some stats from McKinsey & Company for digital trends the world experienced during the pandemic. It has been found that many of the new consumer lifestyle trends that flowered throughout the pandemic are accelerations of trends that were already in motion. In short, we’ve covered a ‘decade in days’ in terms of a world-wide shift in behaviours when it comes to the digital world:

·         E-Commerce Delivery:  accelerated 10 years in 8 weeks.

·         Remote Working: has seen 20x participants on videoconferencing in a 3 months acceleration.

·         Remote Learning: saw an increase of 250 million users in 2 weeks.

·         Online Entertainment: accelerated by 7 years in 5 months.

Human behaviour shift post pandemic

McKinsey & Company also collected data on how human behaviour has fundamentally changed since the pandemic began.  They found that behaviour has changed across 8 aspects of life, these being:

1.       Work: There’s been a rise in unemployment, and a decline of ‘on the go consumption’ with the arrival of remote working.

2.       Learning: Remote learning became the norm for school children, teachers and university students.

3.       Communication and Information: There’s been a shift in media consumption, and less consumption happening ‘in-person’. The move to more online has been evident, and we’ve seen, from the Media Nations report last year, that the total average minutes of viewing per person, per day in 2020 was up by 47 minutes since 2019, all the way up to 5 hours 40 minutes.

The data also showed that nearly all forms of video viewing increased year on year. But, the pandemic also accelerated existing trends in video viewing, such as the ongoing shift of viewing away from broadcast television and towards VoD content.

4.       Travel and Mobility: Reduction in tourist spend and travel retail, and an increase in domestic tourism:
i.   In Google’s 2021 Search Results data, there was a +100% YOY increase on searches such as ‘getaways near me,

ii. And we know from Global Travel Trends Report that 68% of travellers aren’t planning to fly domestically or internationally for their next trip.
iii.  Global Travel Trends Report indicated that 72% of respondents agree that they are passionate about travelling to destinations to help boost tourism revenue and the local economy. 77% agree they want to be more conscious about supporting small, local businesses while travelling.

5.       Shopping & Consumption: There’s been a surge in e-commerce, a preference for trusted brands,  reduced shopping frequency, and a focus on sustainability, as well as many shopping from local stores. Being stuck in a lockdown gave people different perspectives of things closer to home- they became more focused on their local community, and invested in shopping locally. But on the flip side, we also had the ability to shop online as well, and that increased significantly.

6.       Life at Home: Being at home has become the centre of daily lives for many. Home became a classroom for children, an office for workers. In Google’s 2021 search trends, we saw that searches for home décor. For example, there was a +375% YOY increase in searches for ‘vines in bedrooms’ and a 400% increase in searches containing ‘small budget bathroom ideas’.

7.       Play and Entertainment:  Preference for digital entertainment, and channel shifts (cinema to streaming).

8.       Health and Wellbeing: Focus on health and hygiene, use of fitness on demand, acceleration of natural, organic and fresh products.  Google Search 2021 shows that there was an +100% YOY increase for ‘sunscreen for face’ and a +40% YOY increase in searches relating to vitamins.

Retail and shopping behaviour post pandemic

Springboard, a leading provider in retail data analytics found in their annual review for 2021, that, whilst during 2021 there remained a significant gap in retail footfall from 2019, we saw that activity has nevertheless strengthened from 2020 by +54.1% in high streets, +53% in shopping centres, and by +28.7% in retail parks.

  They noted that there were higher sales than in 2019, or sales that at least stayed largely on a level with 2019. They found that also Localisation is key in retail behaviour in the UK. Because home working has become firmly established, many more people are shopping locally, compared to pre-pandemic city workers.

We can see from the slight decline in footfall but the higher spend that if people are visiting shopping centres or retail parks, they’re going with stronger purchasing intent, which means there are better quality spenders, spending the whole day shopping.

The future of changed behaviours

During 2022, we will view further around the changes of COVID and it will be become more apparent if certain behaviours will stick. One obvious example of this is working from home and whether that will stick or eventually fade out. The Office for National Statistics conducted research on views towards working from home in 2021, and how many businesses were working from home, or via a hybrid method.

The overall data collected from the shows the proportion of individuals working remotely has been declining since March 2021, as restrictions began to ease, and although the proportion of workers both working from home and travelling to work has remained relatively stable, evidence from the suggests that individuals and workplaces anticipate increased levels of hybrid models of working after the COVID-19 pandemic. This suggests then, that this will be a worldwide behaviour that might stick in some format.

Additionally, from the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), showed that of businesses that had not permanently stopped trading, 24% intend to use increased homeworking as a permanent business model going forward, while 28% were not sure.

And, of those currently homeworking, 85% of employees currently working from home want a ‘hybrid’ approach of both home and office working in the future.

Using survey data, ONS was able to explore individuals' perspectives of advantages and disadvantages of homeworking. Interestingly, responses of individuals stating whether something was a positive or negative were combined to show an overall view. For example, work-life balance is shown as a positive. People reported the main advantage of homeworking being "an improvement to work-life balance".