Ramadan Insights: shifting consumer behaviour during Covid-19
Nazmul Karim Chowdhury
Management Consulting | Marketing Communications | Brand Strategy
This is the second year for us to begin Ramadan amidst the lockdown in Bangladesh affected by the second wave of Covid-19. Major activities such as praying in congregation, sharing foods with extended families, shopping together now has become solitary affairs. However, even adversity creates some positives too and the present situation is offering more time for greater self-reflection. Due to lockdown as commuting and socialising is out of our scope, there is much more time for introspection.
However, this behavioural changes of consumers during the holy month of Ramadan offers the opportunity to the brand to think how it may influence on some important activities such as food, shopping and fitness.
Demand for safety:
Brands should focus on the impact of Ramadan on routines, meal time and nutritional requirement to engage the audience with their content. As most of the food is cooked at home nowadays due to hygiene issue, brands need to focus on that family member who is doing the arduous work and his/her persona should be represented in the marketing content. Searches such as ‘best Iftar’, ‘best Iftar recipe’ may peak with the usage of apps for the groceries to procure the ingredients along with the food delivery apps to fetch Iftar meals for those who prefer.
As most of these activities will happen online, demand for safety, with greater expectations on payment security, food hygiene, secured home delivery arrangement will be prioritised by the consumer.
Click to watch McDonald’s Special Iftar Sand-Clock:
Second shopping peak:
There is a misconception that significant number of shoppers have finished their shopping early with major apprehension of lockdown considered as first shopping peak (first week before Ramadan begins). It’s wrong, people will continuously look for good deals, best offers, discounts during the entire period of Ramadan both online and offline and the 10 days prior to Eid should be considered as second shopping peak for retail brands to offer best campaigns to delight the consumers.
On the other side, price sensitive mindset during this time should create the scope of mega online sale offers by the e-commerce retailers.
Fuelling fitness:
Prayers and rituals take over bigger role during Ramadan, busy lifestyle takes a backseat and Muslim consumers push the reset button to embrace the slow down. It also makes a deep impact on the fitness goal with tighter schedule balancing between work, fasting and worship. On the other hand, due to the Covid-19 when isolation is part of life, consumers can only make the best of what is available for them at home rather than going to the fitness center to continue their fitness drive.
Brands can drive motivation to fitness and workout during Ramadan by including the role model within the brand communications to inspire the consumers. Specially, urban female consumers who are more conscious about their access to fitness, but struggle to balance time between household chores and other commitments, brands can engage the local female trainers or fitness specialists to offer home workout plans, free time to pursue fitness training to offer viable way to exercise.
A biggest global example is; how Nike has used UK based personal trainer Shazia Hossen
(https://www.instagram.com/_shazfit/?utm_source=ig_embed | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVS25u-fSD8)
Nike’s first Hijab Ambassador in 2019 and fitness coach Nazia Khatun (https://www.naziakhatun.com/ramadan-fitness.html) who are offering customised offers to female Muslims to maintain their fitness levels from home.
The loophole:
Due to the heightened usage of social media, it may seem at times that, social media should be the only platform which needs to be considered for brand engagement. However, it may also happen that, your target audience is partly made up of people who choose to undergo a digital detox during Ramadan. Hence, brands need to have a clear idea what’s happening in the mind of their core target audience. So, before you put all your eggs in social media basket, be mindful of the media diet of your core target audience.
Happy reading. See you soon with some more insights next week!
Nazmul