To provide brands with an opportunity to connect with consumers, C+R hosted an online pop-up community as a part of our COVID-19 Chronicles Consumer Connections Series. For the community, participants from across the United States shared their stories in real-time over a two-week period. A portion of these consumers also participated in a digital ethnography, chronicling their lives, behaviors, and attitudes during the current environment with videos, pictures, and text. And, all of the consumer community participants completed daily diaries to track their emotional journeys.

A few months ago—pre-COVID19—we highlighted three trends that we felt could have the biggest impact on consumer behavior and spending in 2020. Although the Coronavirus pandemic has since won that distinction, we wanted to revisit these trends—sustainability, Gen Z, and qualitative research—to examine how they are faring in the pandemic.

As soon as COVID-19 proved itself to be a big deal by keeping us, and many Americans, safe at home, C+R Research developed a COVID-19 Task Force to keep a pulse on changing consumer behaviors. As we have watched the emotional roller coaster COVID-19 has been for consumers, and the term “new normal” grow in popularity, we began to wonder what the future would look like.

May 27, 2020, marked the 66th day of me “staying at home.” Of course, I haven’t been in my home this entire time. I’ve tried to get out as much as possible to take a walk, sit in my yard, and pick up groceries (safely). I have been working from home this entire time too. Luckily, I haven’t found myself working weekends; so that’s just 53 days of working from home. This is an important marker in my time at home because scientists say it takes 66 days to make a new habit, and so I’ve begun wondering what new habits I have formed at this time. 

While most of the country has been in lockdown for several weeks now, consumers are without a doubt sinking into their new “normal.” Whether it be how consumers grocery shop, interact with friends and family, navigate working from home, or spend their free time, behaviors and attitudes are changing rapidly throughout this crisis. Now more than ever, some consumer behaviors are taking place for the first time, and many are being done online.

As you may or may not know, April 20th—otherwise known as 420 - is often recognized as an unofficial holiday for marijuana (a.k.a. cannabis). At the start of 2020, Illinois became the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana, with many others expected to follow closely behind. Now, in many of these states, decreased regulations are opening up doors for new business and products geared towards the 420-celebrators. 

You have questions about how consumers have coped and continue to deal with the new normal amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Here are resources and easy ways for you to hear directly from consumers.  

As researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve been forced to pivot from in-person research to online/remote research methods. But, as the shelter-in-place orders are beginning to lift state by state and people start resuming life, how are consumers feeling about doing in-person research again?

To understand this, C+R Research partnered with Fieldwork to conduct an online survey of nearly 2,000 consumers from their focus group facility databases.