Human beings tend to be creatures of habit. So, what happens when we are confronted by the type of unprecedented change that we have all faced over the last several years, like the pandemic, supply chain shortages, inflation, and more?  Where do we turn for something comforting and familiar when everything around us is changing? 

Retro shopping behavior Trends

When confronted with great change and uncertainty, humans tend to think back to an earlier time in their lives, when things were simpler, and draw comfort from the feelings of those ‘rose-colored’ memories.  

Baking, zoom parties, and Netflix binge-watching are the things we relied on during the pandemic as our behaviors shifted to adapt to a “new” normal. Another area where we shifted our behaviors during the pandemic was the beauty and grooming category. Starting from necessity of being sequestered at home, most of us were forced to learn and take ownership of our beauty routines and rituals that we might normally have a professional handle. Nielsen reports that the Do-it-yourself (DIY) self-care movement in the personal and beauty categories grew 16% across all channels in 2020.

In this Emerge Smarter webinar, we brought together a panel of our Shopper Insights thought leaders to discuss how the shopper path to purchase continues to evolve as physical and digital worlds continue to merge.  

Please fill out the form on the right and watch our discussion led by our new VP of Shopper Insights, Kathleen Blum. Kathleen was joined by a few of our qualitative and quantitative Shopper Insights experts and discussed: 

Many of us have heard of the metaverse, but very few of us know what it is, let alone all the other acronyms of AR, VR, MR, and XR that may be tossed into discussions about the metaverse. So, let’s start to unpack some of these terms in bite-size pieces, so we can begin to understand why we need to pay attention to the metaverse. 

Take a look at your local grocery store shelf or gas station and it is clear that the US shopper is faced with inflation. In fact, this is the highest rate of inflation posted in the US in over 40 years. As shoppers see increases across a wide variety of goods, they begin to adjust their shopping behavior to make the most of their hard-earned dollars. So, let’s take a closer look at the impact of inflation on brands.

Journey Mapping has been getting a lot of buzz lately. At C+R, we’ve been seeing the frequency of requests for this type of project growing over the years from clients across all industries. But you may ask, “what is a journey map and what’s so special about it?”

In market research, we always need to be considering the relevancy and timeliness of insights. What insights are evergreen? What needs to be revisited? Is now the best time?
Without belaboring the point (because, let’s be honest, we have all heard enough about the pandemic and the “new normal”), now is an important time to re-consider known consumer insights, specifically focusing on consumer mindset and behaviors.

If you’ve ever participated in a poorly executed brainstorming session, you can understand why so many cartoonists make light of them.