Consumer Behaviour Changing Trends by Mr. Venugopal B.

Consumer Behavior Changing Trends
Consumer behavior is the study of how individual customers, groups or organizations select, buy, use, and dispose ideas, goods, and services to satisfy their needs and wants. It refers to the actions of the consumers in the marketplace and the underlying motives for those actions.

Marketers expect that by understanding what causes the consumers to buy particular goods and services, they will be able to determine—which products are needed in the marketplace, which are obsolete, and how best to present the goods to the consumers.

The study of consumer behaviour assumes that the consumers are actors in the marketplace. The per­spective of role theory assumes that consumers play various roles in the marketplace. Starting from the information provider, from the user to the payer and to the disposer, consumers play these roles in the decision process.

Covid -19 has done something which no amount of advertising by brands could do: it has made consumers change their ‘preferences’. ‘Preferences’ have never been easy to change; they are stubborn and often impervious to marketing communication pleas. But a pandemic changed the game faster than what brands could have ever imagined. Almost overnight, hardwired mall shoppers and reluctant fence sitters were pushed into the deep end of the online commerce pool. And in a matter of days there is a high level of dexterity and comfort in online shopping across the board. Will this new found environmental change mutate the mall crawling gene which consumers have had ever since retailing started? Will this shift to a different channel be permanent? Will malls and high street stores be reduced to mere show windows? Admittedly, it is too early to claim that, but with new hygiene and contagiousness concerns, it is possible that people will reconsider venturing into public domains such as shopping malls and movie theatres with the same carefree and reckless gusto as before. Or at least not as unarmed as before – now a bottle of sanitizer and a mask would be minimal essential weapons for anyone going anywhere outside of their homes. In addition there could be paranoia about the physical distance to be maintained with the nearest guy trying to be too social. Would retail sales persons need to pitch their voices louder and farther in times of physical distancing? Would there have to be teams to manage queues outside popular supermarkets as lines snake away? If demonetization jumpstarted the digital payments mindset in India, it may be safe to suggest that C-19 might change the way we behave as consumers.

Consumer behavior and Culture: Consumer behavior is influenced deeply by cultural factors. We are a social community with a high need for group activities – travel, tourism, shopping, religion, and entertainment. Festivals and rituals form a deep part of our religiously inclined psyche. C-19 lockdown notwithstanding, people have been known to conduct religious gatherings, wedding ceremonies and birthday parties even at the peak of the pandemic. These are aberrations, hopefully. Are they? In Kerala, the most well managed state in the C-19 fight so far with an excellent tracking efficiency and a mortality rate of just 0.58 percent (all India 3 percent and world average of 5.75 percent), on April 20 when the government partially lifted the lockdown there was a huge rush of humanity to city centres and shopping malls, so much so that the government there had to seriously consider the re-imposition of the lockdown.

Faculty :

Mr. Venugopal B. LinkedIn profile- https://www.linkedin.com/in/venugopal-b-42586329/?originalSubdomain=in

For more details contact:

Ms. Supriya Patade on 9082205742 – [email protected] and Ms. Laxmi Gupta on 7738149513 – [email protected]