"Things will go back to normal once the pandemic ends."
That's what every marketing executive said in 2020. We'd ride out the disruption, maintain customer relationships, and return to business as usual.
We were wrong.
Five years later, we're not living in "post-pandemic" consumer behavior. We're living in permanently transformed consumer behavior. The pandemic didn't pause existing patterns—it accelerated latent trends and created entirely new expectations that aren't going away.
The data tells a clear story. Let me show you what actually changed, backed by research, and what it means for how you market today.
McKinsey's ongoing research tracking consumer behavior across 45 countries reveals a fundamental shift: consumers don't want to choose between digital and physical anymore. They want both, seamlessly integrated, depending on context.
The Finding: According to McKinsey's 2024 consumer sentiment research, 73% of consumers now use multiple channels during a single purchasing journey, up from 42% pre-pandemic. More critically, 68% expect brands to provide consistent experiences across all channels, and 54% have abandoned a purchase because the transition between channels was clumsy.
What Actually Changed:
Pre-pandemic, consumers tolerated channel friction. You researched online, went to the store, and if the product wasn't available or the in-store experience was poor, that was just how shopping worked.
Post-pandemic, consumers expect radical flexibility. They want to research on mobile while commuting, add items to cart on desktop at work, pick up in-store on the way home, and return via mail if it doesn't work out—all without creating a new account, re-entering information, or losing their cart.
What This Means for Marketers:
Your attribution models are lying to you. When 73% of purchases involve multiple channels, assigning credit to "last touch" or even "first touch" misses the reality. That Instagram ad didn't "fail" because someone bought in-store—it started a journey that ended in revenue.
Your channel teams need to cooperate, not compete. If your digital team and retail team have separate budgets and conflicting KPIs, you're fighting against how customers actually behave. One customer journey crosses both channels.
Your technology stack must enable, not prevent, channel switching. If customers can't easily move between channels without losing information or starting over, you're creating the friction that drives them to competitors who've figured this out.
Practical Example: A furniture retailer client discovered that 61% of their in-store purchases started with online research, and 43% of online purchases involved an in-store visit before buying. They were measuring channel performance separately and missing that their highest-value customers used both. Once they restructured around "customer journey value" rather than "channel value," they stopped optimizing channels against each other and started optimizing the entire experience.
Deloitte's Global State of the Consumer Tracker, which surveys 24,000+ consumers quarterly across 23 countries, reveals something fascinating: the pandemic didn't just make people temporarily price-conscious. It fundamentally changed what "value" means.
The Finding: Deloitte's Q3 2024 data shows that 78% of consumers now evaluate purchases based on "total value"—combining price, convenience, sustainability, and brand values—compared to 53% who prioritized primarily price pre-pandemic. Critically, 64% report they're "more intentional" about every purchase than before COVID, and this intentionality hasn't decreased as economic conditions improved.
What Actually Changed:
Pre-pandemic, most purchases were habitual. You bought the same brands, shopped at the same stores, followed established patterns. The pandemic broke those habits—stores closed, supply chains failed, preferences shifted.
When habits reformed, they reformed differently. Consumers discovered alternative brands during shortages. They learned that higher price doesn't always mean better quality. They realized that convenience had monetary value. They started caring about sustainability and corporate behavior.
Most importantly: they slowed down. The frantic pace of pre-pandemic consumption gave way to more deliberate decision-making.
What This Means for Marketers:
Brand loyalty is now earned continuously, not assumed. That customer who bought from you for a decade pre-pandemic isn't automatically loyal anymore. They're reassessing every category regularly. You're competing for consideration in every purchase cycle, not just during acquisition.
"Value" is your customer's definition, not yours. Stop telling customers your product is "great value" because it's cheap. Understand what they actually value—which might be time savings, ethical sourcing, local production, minimal packaging, or transparent pricing—and deliver that.
Convenience is a feature, not just a service. Deloitte's data shows that 58% of consumers will pay more for significantly greater convenience. Frictionless returns, faster shipping, easier reordering, saved preferences—these aren't perks, they're expected value components.
Practical Example: A specialty coffee brand assumed their customers valued quality above all else and priced accordingly. Post-pandemic research revealed their customers actually valued three things equally: quality, sustainability, and convenience. They were losing sales not because customers didn't like the coffee, but because the ordering process was cumbersome and shipping was slow. Fixing the convenience and highlighting sustainability (which they already did but didn't market) increased retention by 34% without changing the product.
Edelman's Trust Barometer Special Report on Brands and the Pandemic tracked how consumer trust in institutions and brands evolved from 2020-2024. The findings are sobering for marketers.
The Finding: Trust in brands to "do the right thing" dropped from 58% pre-pandemic to 42% in 2024. Simultaneously, 67% of consumers now research brand behavior before purchasing—up from 41% pre-pandemic. Most significantly, 71% say they will actively avoid brands whose values don't align with theirs, and 63% have actually stopped buying from at least one brand due to value misalignment.
What Actually Changed:
Pre-pandemic, brands could mostly stay neutral. Don't take controversial positions. Focus on product benefits. Stay out of politics and social issues. That was safe.
The pandemic made neutrality impossible. Brands had to make visible decisions about employee safety, supply chain ethics, community support, vaccine policies, and crisis response. Consumers watched those decisions and drew conclusions about what brands actually valued.
Simultaneously, social media made brand behavior radically transparent. Employees shared internal communications. Journalists investigated pandemic responses. Consumers compared brand statements to brand actions.
The gap between brand promises and brand behavior became visible. And once consumers saw it, they couldn't unsee it.
Your brand values must be operational, not aspirational. Consumers don't care what you say on your website. They care how you treat employees, source materials, respond to crises, and make decisions when values conflict with profits. Marketing can't paper over operational misalignment.
Transparency is now minimum viable credibility. Consumers expect to understand your supply chain, your labor practices, your environmental impact, your crisis response. "Trust us" doesn't work anymore. "Here's the data, verify it yourself" is the new standard.
Your response to criticism matters more than avoiding criticism. You can't control social media. You will be criticized, sometimes fairly, sometimes not. How you respond—with defensiveness or with genuine listening and improvement—determines whether you build or destroy trust.
Practical Example: A fashion retailer faced criticism about factory working conditions. Their initial response was standard PR: "We take these allegations seriously and are investigating." It made things worse. They pivoted: published their entire supplier list, committed to third-party audits, and created a public dashboard showing progress. Criticism didn't stop, but their willingness to be transparent and improve turned critics into cautious supporters. Sales among their most values-conscious segment increased 28% year-over-year.
Here's what happens when you layer these findings:
Consumers expect seamless omnichannel experiences (McKinsey) + evaluate total value, not just price (Deloitte) + distrust brands that don't align with their values (Edelman) = A fundamentally more demanding, less forgiving customer.
This customer:
You're not marketing to the 2019 consumer anymore. That consumer is gone.
Based on these research findings, here's what needs to change in your marketing practice:
1. Measure customer journey value, not channel performance. Break down silos between digital and physical. Track how customers actually move between channels and optimize for journey completion, not channel attribution.
2. Define value from your customer's perspective, not yours. Stop assuming you know what customers value. Ask them. Research specifically how they define value in your category. Then deliver that definition, not your internal definition of what "should" matter.
3. Audit the gap between brand promises and brand behavior. Have an honest conversation about where your marketing claims don't match operational reality. Fix the operations or change the claims. The gap is now visible to customers.
4. Build transparency into your operations, not just your marketing. Create systems that make your practices visible and verifiable. Supply chain transparency. Pricing transparency. Impact transparency. Make it easy for customers to verify your claims.
5. Train your organization to respond to criticism with curiosity, not defensiveness. When customers criticize, they're giving you information about misalignment between their expectations and your delivery. Treat it as data, not attack.
Not everything changed. Some fundamentals remain true:
Quality still matters. Convenience and values matter more than before, but terrible products fail regardless of how well you deliver them or how transparent you are.
Brand building still works. Trust may be harder to earn, but brands that earn it still command premium pricing and customer loyalty.
Great creative still breaks through. Attention is fragmented, but compelling creative that resonates emotionally still captures it.
Customer service still differentiates. How you treat customers when things go wrong still determines whether they stay or leave.
What changed is that these fundamentals are now table stakes. They're not sufficient—but they're still necessary.
The pandemic didn't create a temporary disruption that we'd recover from. It accelerated trends that were already emerging and created new expectations that are now permanent.
Consumers are more demanding, more value-conscious, more research-driven, more channel-fluid, and more willing to switch brands than ever before.
The marketing strategies that worked in 2019 won't work in 2026. Not because the fundamentals changed, but because the expectations around those fundamentals evolved.
The good news? The research gives us a clear picture of what customers expect. We're not guessing. We know what changed.
The question is whether you're willing to change your marketing practice to match the new reality.
Need help adapting your marketing strategy to post-pandemic consumer behavior? Winsome's consulting practice helps brands bridge the gap between pre-pandemic strategies and current consumer expectations. We'll assess where your approach is misaligned with research-backed consumer behavior and build a strategy that meets customers where they actually are today. Let's talk about what needs to change in your marketing.
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