© Priya Narayanan, Assistant Professor of Marketing, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal.

For over six months now, the world has been in the grip of a pandemic that has changed our lives to a large extent. As human beings and as consumers, we have learnt new habits that have become essential to the new reality. Will these habits last as the pandemic slowly washes away?

Consider the following situation. A father needs to buy a new laptop so that his daughter, who is in high school, can attend online classes. At any other time, he would have visited a retail store as he is more comfortable asking questions and choosing with the help of the salesperson rather than searching for himself online. But now, most stores are closed and even if they were open, he would not feel safe in the airconditioned store premises. So, for the first time in his life, he decides to buy something as costly as a laptop online. And the experience isn’t all that bad!