What Is It Like to Be a Post-Pandemic Consumer?
How our family used to consume goods before and how we do it now. Part I is about doing groceries.
Have you made peace with the new era yet? There will be no “back to normal”. It will only be pre- and post- pandemic lifestyle. Life in pandemic has changed us for good.
I don’t mean this only as something negative. It is exciting to work in marketing right now. We are living the history. I believe that besides times of world wars, there was no other 1- or 2-year period in which consumers would change their behavior so drastically in such a short period as we did in the 2020/21.
A brief study case about changes in consumer behavior in an everyday family of four
I think about it every day. When I do the laundry, shop, cook or drive my car. I try to self-observe and wonder: how have we, as consumers, changed? If I was a respondent in a marketer’s research of consumer behaviors, how would I describe changes in my family’s lifestyle? What is there that we do, think or perceive differently now than before regarding food, travel, parenting, health…? I was thinking so much about it I’ve decided to describe it. I’ve put it in form of a brief study case about how this era affected consumerism of an everyday family of four. Today, I am publishing the first part, which is about our old and new food choices.
Each category is described in before and now sub-chapter. The before-state is written in italics.
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 can do groceries and other small errands. Our jobs, hospitals, and grocery shops are 30 minutes of driving away.
PART I: FOOD
Doing Groceries is not a family trip anymore.
Groceries have always been one of the biggest expenses in our monthly budget. We’ve always cooked from scratch and were therefore buying many ingredients each week.
Our family income has lowered in the pandemic’s beginning. However, we kept spending same amounts for food category. Because everything else except grocery shops closed down, we spent less on other categories and kept spending same on food.
We’ve always done the major groceries once per week. If there was some special deal on Saturday (e.g. 10% off to all you buy), we would use this day to do our shopping. Often the entire family would go in and each of us would choose what he/she prefers to eat for the week.
We still do groceries once per week. Only adults do (solo) shopping, kids stay at home with the other adult. Now we prefer less crowded spaces over coupons. So, for example, even though there is a special deal on Saturdays, we rather do the shopping on Thursday.
I used to observe the shelves and examine the novelties. I would touch boxes of new cereals, cookies, pasta, etc and read their labels.
We’ve minimized touching products. I now read leaflets and when I see something new, I check it up on the website — I read the label and check availability on the ecommerce website of that shop. If I do touch some products in shop which I will not buy, I almost do it secretly, being careful that no one is watching me. I try to hide this “touchy” behavior because it just doesn’t seem a socially acceptable behavior anymore.
We would buy everything at once: cleaning supplies, toiletries and food.
When my husband does the shopping, he only buys food. I order cleaning supplies and toiletries online. There are fewer brands to choose from and they offer me fewer deals, but at least I get what and when I need it.
We’ve also considered ordering entire groceries online, but as we live in a more rural place, there is no delivery option available.
Most of our meals are prepared at home.
We’ve always cooked a lot at home. On the weekends we cooked less. This is because we would eat lunch at our parents’ or in some restaurant. When eating out, we most often had pizzas and salad plates. As a family, we ate out twice to three times per month. My husband also ate out his lunch during weekdays: he would normally bring lunch from home twice per week and eat out three times (he works Mon-Fri).
We spend more on groceries, because we stay at home more. Because we now meet with our family and friends mainly at home (outside on the street or on the terrace) we buy more drinks such are beer, coffee, juices and more snacks.
Because there are even more home-cooked meals in the house, my husband brings lunch from home more often.
We cook more and eat out less in general. We also grill more. If there is a sunny Saturday, we are grilling! And, interestingly enough, on Saturdays our entire neighborhood smells of grill. Everyone is grilling burger meat and summer veggies and all men seem to be in some quietly arranged competition for the best T-Bone of the day😊.
Nothing fits better with grilled food than fresh, homemade sourdough bread. We make bread at least 3-times per week. It is so easy to make it when you stay at home more. All it takes is a piece of dough, called “starter”, flour, salt and water. I got my starter from neighbors. I like the fact that every other house on the street is baking their sourdough bread as we can then often exchange tips and tricks regarding baking. Because we like homemade bread so much, we now consume way more bread that we had ever before. So, we usually even buy some bread (and freeze it) to have it on the days when we didn’t bake. As a result, we now actually buy more bread than we did in pre-pandemic times.
Before, we used to go out and have pizza. Now we still consume food from the same restaurant, but mainly use delivery option. We order once or twice per month. However, pizza doesn’t have to be always from the restaurant. We bake our own pizza from scratch once per week, usually as Sunday dinner. Pizza as a symbol of “special dinner” seems to be a star also among other families in our neighborhood. There is this trend, I’ve noticed in the past year, to make a sourdough pizza at home. It takes 72+ hours to develop the fermented dough, but the result can taste better than restaurant meals. (Yes, our street always smells of grill, freshly baked bread and beer).
We are careful about plastics and choose local over global.
We were eating as healthy as possible, choosing whole foods and cooking from scratch. We preferred food, which had more sustainable packaging (glass or paper) and less plastic. Origin was not a very important factor as we knew local food in supermarkets is always much more expensive option.
Have you heard of hyperlocalism trend yet? This trend explains why we’ve become a lot more sensible regarding food from far away (e.g. blueberries from another continent).
“Hyperlocalism has come to the forefront as consumers’ concept of ‘local’ has shrunk and they look to support their local communities and economies; local communities will rally to support local businesses.” 2021 Global Consumer Trends by Mintel
We now appreciate more foods that are made or grown locally and are in season. When shopping, we pay attention to the origin and packaging of the foods.
Community and local businesses are important to us. As we stayed at home more, we’ve met more locals and made connections with local farmers. We are buying local free-range eggs, eco vegetables, homemade marmalades, vinegar, syrup, flour from the mill etc. and order home-grown pieces of meat.
This is the end of the part I. In the next article I will describe how we’ve changed our behavior regarding travel, health, housekeeping and more.
