What Is It Like to Be a Post-Pandemic Consumer?
Part II is about how our family has changed regarding travel, parenting, and home.
How is your life going right now?
For our family of 4 it is nice, but different. Although all public services keep their doors open, there is still no “back to normal”. We have memories only of pre-pandemic and a reality of post-pandemic life.
A brief study case about changes in consumer behavior in an everyday family of four
Changes are hard, so this may seem like a negative topic. But it is also exciting to see how drastically our world and consumer behaviours have transformed in a brief year or two. To examine all differences in our life, I’ ve put our ordinary life into a consumer study case.
This is the second article in the series. Part I was about how our family has changed consumer behaviour regarding food category. I continue to self-observe and wonder: how have we changed in all aspects of everyday life? In the following lines, I will explore 3 other topics of a family life: travel, parenting and home.
I put each category into before and now sub-chapter. The before-state is written in italics.
Family can be a broad concept. Thus, I share our demographics: We are a family of 4, 2 adults in their 30s and 2 small children. We live in some smaller country in Europe, 15 minutes of driving by car to the major town where we do groceries and other small errands. Our jobs, hospitals, and grocery shops are 30 minutes of driving away. We live in a semi-detached house with a tiny green space around it–we have a little less than 100 m² (1076 ft²) of space inside and outside as well.
TRAVEL
“With global travel restrictions continuing, many travellers are looking for getaway destinations closer to home, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Intent to travel domestically continues to rise, especially in Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey, and the U.K.”
(Abdelkawi & Giorgini, 2021 in Think with Google)
We are introducing “driving nowhere days” into family calendar.
I could rarely stay at home for three days in a row. I didn’t need much though, a brief trip with car around the country was enough. Vacation didn’t need to involve the plane. A half-day drive to the seaside was enough. But moved, I had to.
During this past year, my car stayed parked a lot more than ever before. I’ve also been on maternity leave and pandemic has taken away all the other reasons besides work commute to even move around. It has given us the opportunity to discover thoroughly our village, the neighborhood, surrounding woods and the community. Every time my family would take a walk around the street instead of driving to the town, I felt blessed. I could become a part of the countryside and its beauty in every season.
By getting so much peace from just being here, my need to rush away slowly faded. Now, I am happy to plan a “no-driving Saturday” and enjoy in the slower pace of life, in which I can move only as fast as my feet allow me to. I am so proud of many blank spots on my calendar. I don’t want them to be filled as much as they were before pandemic times.
We are voluntarily staying at home.
When my first child was little, there was rarely a day which we would spend only at home. I took her everywhere in the baby stroller, car seat, or in my carrier. It seemed normal for us to be moving around continuously.
My second child was born in the lock down period. Since he was born, we had to be at home a lot. Even though restrictions are much milder now, our “away days” are still something extraordinary in day-to-day life. Even more so, I can see how he gets a lot more tired and upset after a day full of errands or visits. Babies prefer a slower pace of life, anyway. In this regard, the pandemic has made our family life somehow nicer.
We are using travel agency services.
Our “main vacation” has always involved going to the seaside resort. We’ve always done it by car because of the cost-efficiency of the car comparing to planes. We made reservations for accommodation on our own, so we’ve never traveled via travel agency. Because we had our own vehicle, we were always discovering places in and around destination.
This year we also went to the seaside. This time, going by car was not only cost-effective solution but also the most appropriate one. Government’s covid-related rules vary from day to day and having own vehicle to travel is the best solution in case we would have to return to our country earlier than planned. We’ve also booked our accommodation via travel agency for the first time. We did so because we wanted to have a cancellation insurance included in the offer.
This summer we stayed more in destination and spent far more time on the beach instead of discovering surroundings. Namely, there were new covid cases among locals and we became a little too scared to wonder around.
PARENTING
“… the strengthening of connections within the nuclear family is a key benefit of the pandemic.”
(Paradis, Todorov & Godbout, 2021 in World Economic Forum)
Our pace of life has slowed down.
Household tasks used to be something we had to squeeze in the ever-full family timetable. They would usually go somewhere after working long hours and before rushing kids to bed or more often, in the early Sunday morning before rushing outside with the next activity, planned 3 months in advance.
Lockdown time has shown us how mundane tasks can be full of family time. For example, baking focaccia instead of regular bread loaf, cracking hazelnuts, gardening can actually bring enjoyment when you do them without rush. When you just stay in the moment, knowing that there is nothing better/more important/more urgent to go or to do. Creating this feeling of coziness in our home felt a must in 2020, but now it became a choice.
Fewer hours in kindergarten means more family time.
We would bring our toddler to the kindergarten around 7.00 and pick her up at 16.00, nine hours in total. This gave just enough time to commute to workplace, be there for 8 hours and commute back. She was among first kids to arrive and the last ones to leave, but there were always other kids too.
We would come home around 16:30, play a little, cook dinner and at 19:00 it was time to start our go-to-bed routine.
Now, suddenly, the “rush hours” in the kindergarten wardrobes have moved. Most parents bring their kids in at 8.00 and pick them up at 15.00. When we come in at 15.30, our toddler is the last one. How is this possible? Changes in the working routines (remote work from home) enable families to spend more time together. Instead of commuting one hour daily, parents now spend this time with their kids.
Adding 1 hour of time to spend with your child to a day may not seem a lot. But compared to 2,5 hours we used to have between coming home and going to bed, this hour increases our parent-child bonding time by 40%!
HOME
“Edible -garden influencers have seen up to 400% growth on their channels and are being inundated with questions.”
(2021 Garden Trends Report: The Great Reset)
Gardening became a priority.
I used to always stream to have a pleasant garden. My ideal garden was full of blossoming flowers, with bright colors in every corner and a tiny patch of edible garden beds.
The pandemic showed us just how important is to eat home-grown or at least locally grown food. It has become very important to not depend solely on supermarkets, which offer us fruits and veggies from “kingdoms far away”. Therefore, we used spare time of the lockdown eras to build bigger vegetable garden. I am discovering ways to increase edible spots in our tiny outside space. For the moment, there are lettuce, herbs and berries in our garden pots instead of just colorful flowers.
We have increased budget for home improvements.
Our spare time as family used to be all about gaining experiences and going around to build stories (“If you don’t go, you don’t have a story”, remember?). So, home improvements were never a priority in our family budget. Nor was home decoration. Home was to have somewhere to eat and sleep.
Now, home is to have a warm, cozy nook, where we make our memories. To have a story without leaving the nest. This perspective is quite new to me. Therefore, I am shifting larger proportion of family budget into transforming a house into a home.
I can notice a similar trend going on with several of our neighbors. Families stay at home more and renovate more.
It’s pool party time!
Having a pool in the garden used to be a luxury.
Besides renovating the interiors, families are adding one very common watery element into their outdoor spaces. It’s a pool! It got so popular; stores went out of “pool accessories” such are pool covers in the summer of 2020. Well, that was the first summer of new, covid era. However, garden pools were back in the summer of 2021.
I am writing this observation in a more impersonal way, as we did not have a pool in 2021. We did in 2020 and kids want to have it back in 2022. (Talking about summer only, because we live in 4 seasons place-autumn and winter seasons are freezing cold). This year I vetoed it because I wanted more space for the garden.
This is the end of the part II. In the next article, I will describe how we’ve changed our behavior regarding health, beauty, shopping and more.
To read about how we buy, prepare and eat food differently since the pandemic, see part I.
