siliconindia | | July 20209has already challenged the market leaders in its brief time of existence. This indicates how consumers are working from home and getting en-tertained going forward. Companies like TCS, and Infosys have already incorporated work-from-home cul-ture and set a target of transitioning 50 percent of their total work force to work from home going forward. Few studies suggest that work-from-home has also increased productivity of employees. This pandemic has brought us closer to our families and has made us concerned about hygiene and so-cial distancing. Going forward, we will be more inclined to retain these habits while shopping, going out, sharing a cab, and owning or renting. Also, this has made consumers do day-to-day household chores. These changes will affect consumer buying and how they perceive what's neces-sary and important.Indians have already seen their share of e-Commerce growth driven by the exorbitant sales conducted by Amazon, Flipkart sand others. With COVID-19, Indian customer habits are strengthening in digital consump-tion, which is a clear indication that the Indian customer is digital savvy and ready. COVID-19 is a disrup-tion; therefore, marketing also has to evolve, and there has to be shift in consumer behavior. There will be a decrease in conventional advertis-ing spends, since more and more con-sumers are going digital. There will be an increase in e-Commerce ad-vertising spends as customer switch to buying online. As per reports, re-tail industry has already increased their digital marketing spends by 20 percent.Real estate is not far away from this impact, and hence is beginning to adapt to these structural changes in the buying habits of Indian consum-ers. Consumers working from home will create the need for functional homes, wherein they can have a dedi-cated space for a work station, and can go about doing their work with mini-mum interruption. Day-to-day house-hold chores will lead to the need of smart homes, where consumers can utilize technology to save time. For a majority of Indian customers, choos-ing necessity over luxury will be the path ahead for at least the next couple of years. With consumer preference of using technology in all aspects of life, developers too will have to adopt these evolving consumer behav-ior demands in their projects going forward. Projects have to be deliv-ered while taking into consideration these demands. Developers adapting to these requirements will definitely leap forward and have a bigger mar-ket share then their peers.With lockdown, social distancing and customers' prime requirement of personal hygiene, in-person site visits of projects have reduced, as the con-sumer is skeptical to step out of the safety of his house. Developers need to use technology to engage with cus-tomers online. From just using digital platforms to promote their projects, the digital strategy has to evolve due to this disruption. The developers have to give the customer access to interact and evaluate their projects online. A complete online project experience, which is immersive and interactive at the same time ­ Vir-tual site visits, virtual walkthroughs allowing customers to interact with multiple projects, view properties, engage with project details, project accessibility, project amenities and even to book their property of inter-est online are the need of the hour to make the customer home-buying ex-perience convenient. Technology can cover almost 95 percent of the entire consumer home-buying process. CO-VID-19 is that inflection point where-in the consumer buying process has to be eased. With consumer preference of using technology in all aspects of life, developers too will have to adopt these evolving consumer behavior demands in their projects going forwardPankaj Narang, CMO
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