COVID19 has changed the way we live and think. We are going into a phase of the “new normal”. Pandemic had huge impact on consuming culture for sure. Let’s take a look at the new trends that are changing our life-style.
Shopping Trend
People are inclined to buy things online in post covid period rather than offline shopping. Volumn of online platforms like Coupang, Market Kurly had increased about 92.5% compared to first quarter of 2019 according to the statistics from Ministry of Trade. Also lots of daily subscription services became a new black in the market, especially for the fresh food like salad or fruits. And Korea is not a big country, losgistics companies are doing their job very well. Accordingly, shipping on the day or by the morning second day is not a difficult issue in South Korea. This online consuming behaviour is not a trend can be changed rapidly, it’s becoming a sort of culture since it’s convenient and affordable. So enjoy “buy anytime anywhere and get it today” culture if you are staying in Korea.
Home Dining
Not majority of population in Korea used to do a lot of home dining. Eating in the restaurant is super affordable, there is not a big price difference between home dining and eating out like countries in Europe or even America. So instead of eating out, people just do the delivery, dining at home so frequently, there are a few convenient services like Baemin which started from a small start-up, and faced rapid growth during last few years. In addition, huge hotels like JW Marriott, Westin Chosun, Lotte Hotel, started making ready-to-eat products, and launched at both online and offline service, which widened options for people who like high quality fine-dining. These hotels also started take away service after top tier chefs cooking at the kitchen. So whatever kind of food, home dining is the new trend in the whole industry.
Single Portion Food
As the covid, remote working became more and more universal. Both for working people and students. And a lot of them are actually living along, so what to cook and eat became a big burden on people. Major food product companies like CJ Bibigo or Dongwon caught this issue and started to make single portion products. These products are affordable and convenient, also super accessible as you can buy in any 24/7 convenient store like CU, 7-11, GS25. My personal favorite is Mandu from Bibigo.
Digital Nomad Life
Home in nowadays, is not only residence, but also classroom, restaurant and office. People spend immense amount of time at home. Accordingly, home decoration industry had a massive growth during the pandemic season. Typical example people are talking about is growth of a start up called “Today’s House”. This is a platform like interior chunk of Pinterest, they have everything displayed including product itself and interior example, super easy to get a link for the products. Also wide range of price help expanded customer scope.
Face Masks
Everyone was told to wear mask to minimize covid infection. Even now, places like public transportation, wearing masks is a mandatory thing. One interesting thing about this is actually, there are a lot of people didn’t get a cold as before even some ENT problem. The other thing is there are quite a lot of interesting products related to masks are on the market. A marketing copy like “Our products leave less make-up on masks, don’t worry about the first date” is a very interesting trend.
Home Training
We were not allowed to go to the gym for a while, when the pandemic happened. Especially first few lock-down months. And people started to do some home training. There are lots of online contents or lectures teaching Work out, Dance, Yoga, Pilates etc. Anyway we have an amazing platform called Youtube which contains massive amount of free contents. So save the risk of stepping into the crowd, start home training by the trend!