The Big Shift is Here, is your Business ready?

In 1950 Maxwell Maltz introduced the Habit theory which says it takes 21 days to change any habit.  Since entire world is locked down and in quarantine, for more than a month now, we are already observing a big change amid the lockdown, be it the consumer behaviour, preferences, spending habit, or be it remote working, are the brands and businesses ready for the shift?

For first few days it was tough for people to stay at home and adjust to the new routine, but with the passing of time we can observe that most of the people have actually have adapted the change.

Quarantine has given an instant rise to the installs of TicTok App, even the most introvert people are making tictok videos, those who are not creating videos, have downloaded app to watch the videos. 

It has also given a good family time, people who never entered the kitchen are cooking finger licking food, old college friends are playing Ludo together. The family and friends who would talk to each other occasionally are coming together on zoom call. People who travelled earlier to big markets or malls for groceries are buying from a nearby store, home exercises are increasing day by day. With limited new content on tv and no theatre people are moving to digital content.

So what’s the shift? 

When PM announced Demonetization there was lot of friction in acceptance, there were queues outside the banks and ATMs, the rescue was PayTM and other online payment apps and people moved to digital payments. Habits changed, similarly we can see ourselves shifting towards more digital. Hence, Facebook invests in Reliance to make India more Digital. 

Who Will be The Winner?

We can already see a few winners like TicTok, Zoom Meeting, Google Hangout, Home Kitchen, the online content creators, business trainers giving online training, online education. The Local Stores and the businesses that will be moving online as-soon as possible will win, theatres will have to think a way out. When people will realize the money saved during lockdown their spending habit will change, they would love to consume home cooked food and watch a film online, ringing in those earlier days of livelihood bringing more life to it, creating moments. 

India may switch to the new habit of working from home, lockdown has given the right adrenaline in the times of corona to make India work from home. Even employees would prefer work from home to a larger extent. It could boost freelancers sustainability or the consulting jobs and at the same time they can explore the passion that they discovered during the lockdown.

Will people still go out for dinner at the same frequency as they did earlier? Will they watch movies in theatres or have already made peace with the digital. Even if we keep the habit aside, for the coming six months, people will not feel safe going out for anything be it dining, salon or for shopping, their vendors down the lanes are the new supermarkets. 

At the end of the day, it’s all about Habits, be it our expenses, our lifestyle or our work ethics. We are undergoing a paradigm shift towards a new and better world probably it is time to cultivate right habits.