COVID-19 Survey Results
Last week I published an article discussing how businesses need to be prepared to adjust to how their customers lives might have changed after COVID-19. After that I figured the best way to back up a think-piece is with some facts, so I ran a survey between April 17 and 23 2020* to see what behavioural changes people were reporting and whether they expected to maintain their new habits post-lockdown.
The results were interesting, and I really hope they will help business in NZ decide how to approach their post-lockdown comeback, and with adapting products or services to people’s changes in behaviour.
Firstly, the recovery of the economy is going to depend on people being able to spend money. So let’s start with work. 10% of respondents have lost their jobs since lockdown. On top of that, around 8% of respondents can’t work during lockdown, which means when they get back to work they’ve got some financial catching up to do. But on the upside, 53% are still working in some form or another, and 29% didn’t work outside the home before lockdown, so COVID-19 hasn’t changed their employment situation. Overall, 82% of respondents are in roughly the same employment situation that they were in before lockdown.
So, given the majority of people are going to be back at work once lockdown is over, the question is whether they expect to go back to life as it was, or whether they think the experience of COVID-19 and being on lockdown has changed how they intend to live their life going forward.
And it turns out 79% of people intend to make changes to how they live their life.
Perceptive and Sapien’s ongoing COVID-19: Insights Tracker has shown New Zealanders to be feeling more positive emotions (Positive, Loving, Joyful, Happy and Content) than negative ones (Angry, Negative, Sad, Scared, Stressed) during this time, and so it wasn’t too surprising to see that many people planned to make lifestyle changes after lockdown.
SOURCE: Five by Five COVID-19 Survey “Is there anything extra you'd like to say about the effect the current Coronavirus Pandemic has had on your life?"
By far the biggest change people said they plan to make is to include more family activities in their life – 41% of respondents intend to do more with their families after lockdown – and only 1% say they plan to do less with their family. On top of that, only 9% miss sending their children to daycare/kindy etc, so it really does seem like parents are seeing some benefits to spending all this time with their kids. And for businesses, this coupled with the 44% of people who miss domestic travel, identifies a great opportunity for businesses who cater to family friendly activities to attract new visitors from all over NZ once travel restrictions ease.
And increased opportunities face retailers who have the facility for customers to shop on-line – 31% of respondents plan to shop on-line more after lockdown than they did before, while only 10% plan to increase the amount of in-store shopping they do.
For businesses with no e-commerce platform, now is definitely the time to set one up. Templated CMS providers like Shopify, Squarespace and Wix have very user-friendly platforms although their functionality can be limited, platforms like Google Sites can host e-commerce shops through integrations and similarly, people with Wordpress sites have a variety of e-commerce solutions available to them.
What about hospitality? The industry has been hit hard by the lockdown, and people have spent weeks cooking and baking (89% have been baking or cooking as much or more than usual), learning new culinary skills and breaking old habits (Friday takeaways anyone?) – what impact does this have on their intention to go out after lockdown lifts? Well, 48% of respondents miss eating out, the third highest activity on our miss-list! While 27% say they will likely eat out less after lockdown, 60% expect to go back to eating out the same way they did before, and 12% want to do it more!
Bars, pubs and clubs however, may find their comeback takes a little longer, with only 14% of respondents really missing going out on the town.
The opportunity for the hospitality industry really lies in providing people with the social contact they’ve been denied for so long – 66% of people say they miss their friends and 64% say they miss their family members. On top of that, 37% of people miss having people around – so if your business can tap into providing people with what they’ve been missing most, and your marketing reminds people of that, you’ll have the best possible chance of attracting patrons back as soon as possible.
And the beauty industry has a similar opportunity, being missed by 43% of respondents! The fear that people will resort to box colours and home haircuts is likely well-founded, (according to FoodStuffs, hair colour sales have skyrocketed 340% during lockdown) but the chances of people continuing to do their own hair once lockdown is over is slim – we know we aren’t looking our best right now... and we need the professionals!
Another thing that people are planning to do more of after lockdown is gardening. With lockdown restricting people’s access to supplies for DIY and gardening the demand will be high during level 3 as people are still at home with more time on their hands, but able to finally source supplies.
Businesses who can provide products and services helping Kiwis make the most of their gardens should be able to capitalise on this, especially once people finally return to their workplaces and have less time to maintain their new gardens.
If you are struggling with the decision of whether or not to advertise right now, this survey by PureProfile commissioned by DDB shows which industries kiwis would like to hear from – and apparently, the appetite for brand messages is 10%-20% higher than usual.
And if you’re still wondering how on earth to approach your messaging, here’s some more info from the DDB survey – showing that being informative and aware of the situation your customers are in is definitely the way to go.
Ultimately, while there is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has made a huge impact on people around the world and has caused stress for businesses and individuals, Kiwis have really embraced the positives, and businesses can too.
For the COVID-19 Survey results covering how media consumption by our respondents has changed and how they see themselves using media post-lockdown see part 2 here.
*Five by Five’s COVID-19 survey ran between April 17th and 22nd 2020. Respondents were aged 25+ and were Facebook users. Confidence interval 95%, margin of error <7%.