With the pandemic, we are more digital and aware consumers

How have consumer habits and preferences changed since COVID-19 appeared? What innovations are emerging to respond to these changes? Social changes produce changes in habits and values, and these demand new forms in the demand for products and services, which can be provided in innovative ways: we are more digital consumers.

Let’s first review some of the most significant social changes that are taking place since the beginning of the pandemic:

1. On the one hand, teleworking has burst in, forced in the hardest months of the pandemic for a large part of the population, and which today is being maintained in a hybrid face-to-face-remote model.
2. On the other hand, there is a growing interest in wellness and health.
3. There is also a greater concern about the environment and climate change.
4. Finally, there is greater awareness and social responsibility: initiatives and actions that aim to favour the most disadvantaged groups and fight against inequalities are valued and supported.

These social changes bring about changes in habits and values:

• If we go to a hybrid work model, where we only have to go to the office two or three days a week, does it make sense to continue living in cities, close to the office? Does it make sense to have your own vehicles if you are not going to use them on a daily basis?
• In this hybrid model, which will not only affect work, but also education, there are also changes in consumption habits related to being at home more: type of shopping, schedules, mobility, etc. Euromonitor International’s Top 10 Global Consumer Trends for 2021 report points out that consumers are moving away from globalization and hyper-consumption and are moving towards buying fewer, higher-quality products and supporting their local community.
• An interest in wellness and health translates into needs for:
  • spend more time outdoors.
• The greater concern for the environment and climate change translates into a greater awareness of the sustainability of what we consume, buy or use. There is a growing interest in consuming energy from renewable sources, in using less polluting means of transport, in recycling and reusing. Consumers want to see these attitudes in the brands and companies they use. In fact, in a survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group, 75% of consumers consider sustainability to be an important factor in their purchasing decisions. While 73% would change the way they consume regularly to offset their environmental impact.
• The greater awareness and social responsibility is reflected in the fact that 29% of consumers are actively involved in political and social issues, according to the aforementioned Euromonitor report. Consumers are motivated to buy services and products from companies that embody their values and beliefs, according to a study conducted by Accenture.

In short, there is a growing preference for local and socially responsible businesses, for the purchase of healthy and sustainable products, for the use of goods and services with a low environmental footprint and, at the same time, for the incorporation of digitalisation in many everyday aspects. Not to mention that consumers are looking for companies and brands with a social purpose. As the expert of the Future Trends Forum, Christoph Steck, said in a webinar on Digital Trust, the focus of companies should not only be the individual, but society in general; it is imperative to move towards stakeholder capitalism.

Finally, the habits of use of certain goods are changing. It is preferred to experience something than to buy something. These changes in habits, in turn, favor innovations in business models and in life and consumption proposals.

Here are 6 of the most powerful innovation trends:

1. Creation of ecosystems for digital nomads, such as the one being developed by our expert, Nacho Rodríguez, founder of repeople.co.
2. Mental health and wellbeing apps, such as those developed by the companies in which Joy Ventures has a stake, whose CEO is FTF expert Miri Polachek.
3. Solutions that combine the physical and online experience in an individualized way and allow the user to be offered a phygital experience.
4. Participatory platforms for the solution of social and environmental problems. Civil society has become a key player in social and environmental decision-making processes and is involved in implementing and monitoring policies at local, national and global levels. Companies that are committed to the communities in which they operate, not only economically, but also by providing innovative solutions in their respective field of action, will gain the trust of citizens.
5. The next generation of mobility platforms, with schemes such as Lynk & Co, recently implemented in Spain, which proposes everything from monthly leasing with no commitment to permanence to the digital platform so that leasing customers can rent vehicles to people who have registered as members of the community. All this online and through Apps!
6. On a much more technical level, it is worth highlighting innovations that seek to store energy in a much more efficient, cleaner, safe and cheaper way. These include:
   1. Hydrogen as a clean fuel, which can play a key role for long-term energy storage and for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in sectors that are difficult to decarbonise with existing solutions, such as long-distance heavy transport. By way of illustration, the Spanish CAF (Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarril) is technically leading the FCH2Rail project with the aim of designing and manufacturing a hydrogen-powered railway prototype.

In conclusion, companies need to listen deeply to customers and their underlying values to understand what they need and how to satisfy them in the most convenient and convincing way: Digitalization is mandatory, but the difference will be made by those companies that use innovation to combine it with an extraordinary face-to-face experience, and that, in addition, manage to generate trust – as the report “Trust in the digital age” points out” of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation’s Future Trends Forum, when making a purchase decision, trust is in second place, only after price.

The future belongs to those companies that innovate towards ecosystems of phygital reality, where consumers can live, work, shop and play efficiently both in person and online.

In this sense, it will be necessary to be attentive to technologies such as the Spanish Seeketing, which allows you to unify user-to-user behavior (unique ID) in the physical and online space.