How will the changing behaviors with the pandemic affect the upcoming period?
• Ford's 2021 Trend Report highlights the ways people cope with problems around the world and their power to adapt to change. The survey, covering 14 countries, reveals how families and individuals are rewriting the rules in the workplace, in their family life, in their social environment, as well as in the consumption of products and services.
• According to the report, 69% of consumers on a global scale during the pandemic period stated that they felt overwhelmed by the changes in the world, while when asked how well they adapted to the changes during the pandemic, 47% said it was 'easier than they imagined'.
• There appear to be surprising differences between generations in terms of resistance and adaptation to change during the pandemic period. 63% of Generation Z respondents said adaptation was harder than they thought, while this rate was 42% in the Boomer generation.
2020 was a year that no one could foresee. Causing economic, political and emotional chaos, COVID-19 has tested the boundaries of individuals, families, health systems and every sector in society. However, the pandemic has also shown how successful people can be in finding ways to cope and adapt.
In its '2021 Future Outlook' trend report, published for the ninth time this year, Ford analyzes changes in consumer behavior and attitudes to understand how the changes experienced with the pandemic process can affect our world in 2021 and beyond.
Consumer trends prominent in the global survey covering 14 countries in America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East are as follows:
• Pressure Points: Global concern is high due to fears of getting Covid-19 and concerns about how the pandemic will affect education, employment and other areas. 63% of adults say they feel more stressed than a year ago, with 5 out of 4 say they need to be more concerned with their emotional health. People who are well aware of the effects of the epidemic on mental health are finding innovative ways to deal with and connect with this condition.
• Escape Vehicle: As the boundaries between work and private life began to disappear, "What day is it today?" it has become a common question everyone is asking. While consumers seek new escape routes to overcome the monotony of the pandemic and lockdown, many seek shelter in their vehicles for escape. More than 4 in 1 adults who have a tool on a global scale say they use the tool for relaxation. Approximately 5 out of 1 people use their vehicle to be alone and 17% to work.
• Loneliness: The pandemic highlighted consumers' need for friendship and reshaped the feeling of being family. Loneliness is very common around the world, with one in two people regularly saying they feel lonely. Younger generations feel this most intensely. The rate of generation Z who say they feel lonely on a regular basis is approximately twice that of the Boomer generation (2% and 64%). As a result, many are rethinking where to live, getting closer to their family and finding new ways to make friends, whether online or offline.
• Awareness: Gaps in inequalities and imbalances around the world are widening, with the pandemic's disproportionate negative impact, particularly on low-income communities, ethnic minorities and women. As the awareness of consumers against this gap increases, brands emphasize their activist and entrepreneurial stances. 76% of adults on a global scale think that they expect brands to take a stand on social issues, and 75% think that brands are trying to act in the right way today.
• New normal: What and how we buy has undergone a serious transformation during the pandemic period. While companies, large and small, adapt to this transformation at dizzying speed, many consumers are embracing and enjoying the new normal. 75% of adults on a global scale say they like the improvements companies have made in their shopping experience since the pandemic started, while 41% say they do not want to return to the shopping methods before the pandemic.
• Traffic Conversion: Even though the pandemic made us feel like we were stuck in the house, we actually did not stay in place. With the pandemic, individual transportation is also developing. Cities are closing the streets to make way for cyclists as bike sales boom. People tend to buy cars because they can control their own environment. The wider implementation of autonomous driving is gaining momentum with smart city planning. Worldwide, 67% of adults say they are “hopeful about the future of autonomous vehicles”, while 68% of parents say they prefer to entrust their children to a driverless car rather than a stranger.
• Sustainability: In the early days of the pandemic, as curfews were imposed around the world, the improvement in air quality manifested itself as the “positive side of the process”. However, this optimism diminished rapidly as the consumption of plastics and other disposables increased, and it was seen that being sustainable and staying sustainable did not always go hand in hand. Especially younger generations are concerned about this situation. On a global scale, 46% of Generation Z employees say that the pandemic makes us more wasteful, while 47% say that the pandemic will negatively affect the environment in the long term.
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