Covid and Consumer Behaviour: What will be the impact of 2nd wave of coronavirus?

From the last year's situations, we were just alleviating with the higher number of cases and taking a pace with the spike of vaccination drive in India 2021. Suddenly, coronavirus has taken up the U-turn and came back with a different variant. The version coronavirus 2.0 has badly hit India with the impose of state restrictions while the nation lockdown has been avoided.

The rise of the second wave has rapidly increased as compared to the first wave. It had taken 108 days for the cases to rise from 8,000 to 97,000,  dated from 2nd June 2020, to 17th Sept 2020 in the first wave. While in the second wave of the pandemic, it just took 63 days to rise from 8,000 on 2nd February ,2021 to 1,03,558 on 5th April, 2021, which surges to 3 lakhs and more cases to till date. Hence, the infectious rates are multiplied and is growing tremendously this year as compared to the last wave. 

On one hand, there is a radical increase of the virus tolls this year but on the other hand, there are fewer paradigm shifts in the consumer’s behavior. Lokendra Ranawat, CEO & Co-Founder, WoodenStreet cites the reasons behind that why there is less impact:-

Easy familiarity with WFH mode

The disastrous 2020 year has taken shape to a new normal, ‘work from home,’ in many organizations and corporate offices and act as a catalyst in this second wave. Almost all the companies have invested in various digital technologies to support effectively their employees that includes video conferencing apps, task and work flow management etc. In fact, many reputed and globally spread organizations in India such as Twitter (the first company to respond to WFH for employees), Facebook, Shopify etc. has announced work from home forever for their staff. In addition to this, last year, TCS said only 25% of their employees (more than 450,000 currently) could work from the office by the year 2025. Hence, consumers are well immune to this adoption of the new digital era. 

Minimal fuss in Kids Online classes

Virtual classes for the students in any stage, whether it’s for school-going, for colleges or for higher learning, has taken up the new trend and peak in the digital age. As of 2020, the revenue for e-learning technology industry has grown very much and likely to produce higher in the upcoming years. Moreover, the Asian market sees a 20% annual growth revenue through the virtual learning industry. Further, the other online learning platforms such as Udemy, Teachable etc are also growing exceptionally with a number of experts and online courses in this pandemic. Hence, people are enrolling in more online courses to develop and polish their skills while staying home. 

Consumers Online shopping is more resilient this time

A large number of retailers and Kirana stores have gone to the digitalization of business in this pandemic 2020. The report by the retail Tech company recently, SnapBizz, revealed that over 1 million retail shops went digital in accepting the orders from the customers and delivering to their doorsteps. Even many of them have passed the bills to small start-ups or software companies for making their personalized apps in order to ease the online shopping for consumers. While last year, the basket size of stores was going up to 50% but in 2021, there is 80% exponential growth in the Kirana store business without impacting much of the lockdown restrictions. Hence, it’s proven that consumers are more resilient in shopping online for all the grocery and household items this time. 

Health Awareness is the Hot Topic in Nation

Amidst the second wave of a novel coronavirus in India, people are becoming more aware of their personal health and safety. Due to this, they have highly invested in Double mask theory and the immense sales growth in the pharmaceutical products such as sanitizers, first-aid medicines etc. 
Furthermore, the finance ministry of India reported to the Lok Sabha that the health insurance coverage saw a growth of 69.8% in the months after the hit of the pandemic. Last but not least, people are more indulged in the drive of vaccination to stay protected from infection.
   
Hence, to sum up this, here are some facts as per the National Retail Federation (NRF) survey. One that, 9 in 10 consumers have changed their traditional shopping benefits. More than 50% of the consumers have started ordering their products from digital stores as they were normally used to purchase from offline stores. Plus, 6 in 10 consumers have said that they are afraid to step outside their houses for shopping or for any purpose due to the fear of being getting infected. Hence, the consumers are well prepared before for the business crisis situation for lockdown from the results of last year as well as more aware in terms of health and safety regime.