If the pandemic taught us anything, it was the importance of having a safe space to live, work, and study. We spent months in our houses in full confinement and we had a lot of time to reflect on many deep and superficial things, while we tried to adapt to the new dystopian reality that we had to live.
From the research we carried out at Youniversal, through both national surveys and focus groups with different socioeconomic levels, we found that at that time middle and upper-middle class consumers privileged all those consumptions and activities that made them feel safer and in control of your body and your life, making better use of your home spaces: from hiring better connectivity plans, to creating small spaces where you can exercise, to installing more comfortable work spaces with better chairs, desks, lighting. It was also sought to take advantage of green or outdoor spaces and transform balconies and terraces into more lively places, in addition to integrating plants into the house. It was a search to connect with something fresh, alive, open and natural, in the midst of so much concern. In this search for spaces and fresh air, in some cases there were even moves to more remote areas, as long as there was good connectivity. Beyond these searches of the middle classes, in the popular classes, the survival mode was intensified to the extreme.
Today, through vaccination, life is returning to its more normal lines, but the house, which allows people to enjoy it, feel safer and live good times in general, has taken on another value for people. In Argentina, we find that 8 out of 10 consumers today declare that health is the most valuable thing they can have and that after the pandemic, they changed their priorities. Despite a difficult economic context, Argentine consumers seek to the extent of the possibilities and pocket of each one, to be able to enjoy more, small or great moments, individual or shared, because they realized that those moments and situations are good for them . 7 out of 10 agree that enjoying small or great moments contributes to a better quality of life.
Using their arsenal of knowledge acquired from “consumer-survivors” of the different Argentine crises, they make use of quotas, promotions, discounts, special consumption days and combos for everything that allows them to consume while beating inflation. All this applied to consumption of the basic and essential categories (especially food and beverages, hygiene and personal care), but also, and as far as possible, of small or large tastes that manage to occur. From a rich wine, to a top-of-the-line soda, to a chocolate, a perfume, clothing, going to the movies, theater, recitals and the list goes on. Short-term consumption that in some way mitigates (or compensates) the social feeling of tiredness and discomfort that is experienced.
Applied to the world of the home, we find the “house-shelter-nest”, seeking to equip the home (appliances as a “saving” purchase against inflation), for some to update TV, plasma and projectors for this same reason, added to the next World as an excuse.
For others, fix, paint or decorate the home, add details of comfort in the high SES such as home automation, security, wine cellars, and for the medium SES paint, renovate a space. While for more functional aspects, more comfortable workspaces, better connectivity plans, better chairs, lighting, computers, to work more comfortable at home as most of the jobs that before they were purely face-to-face and office, they are acquiring hybrid routines.
At times when the economy is burning, where inflation is already part of the landscape, post-pandemic Argentine consumers learned that “today is today” and that everyone has to enjoy what they can and how they can. The pleasure of the present becomes a vaccine that protects us against the uncertainty of the future.
Ximena Diaz Alarcon is cfounder and CEO of Youniversal
by Ximena Diaz Alarcon
