article source: forbes.com
overview: As we enter 2021, how have business priorities changed since before the crisis began? And perhaps most importantly, what's coming down the pike?
Let's look at some of the salient shifts in consumer preferences and behaviors, how businesses are responding and what’s just over the horizon.
excerpt:
Shifting Consumer Behaviors
The pandemic has fundamentally uprooted longstanding patterns in the way people think about and spend their money. Why do I say that?
For starters, there's an emerging body of evidence to suggest not only that consumer behaviors and preferences have significantly changed since the onset of the pandemic, but that they have changed for good. Analysis of consumer sentiment around the world, for example, indicates that at least 65% of those who started new consumption habits because of Covid-19 intend to continue with those habits indefinitely. For the majority, in other words, they haven't simply entered into a temporary holding pattern. What we're looking at is long-range change of the very highest magnitude.