Marketing Strategies During the Time of Covid-19--What Role does Customer Behaviour Changes Play?

Abstract

This paper discusses both the psychological and physical effects of COVID-19 on customer behavior changes and elaborates on companies approaches to address these changes through marketing strategies and marketing policies. By comparing with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the paper analyzes the similar change patterns in customer behavior that COVID-19 shares with GFC and what marketers can leverage from historical experiences. However, the public-health concerns have been playing significant part during this crisis when it comes to customer behavior changes, such as restricted mobilities have been incentivizing customers to shop in different categories and to rely on online services more than ever. In this paper, cases covering different industries have been studied and presented to illustrate how marketers can utilize their technical skills to make the unique charlatanistic of this crisis an opportunity to help the organization to grow.