Thursday November 11, 2021
Jacuzzis, exercise bikes, consoles
Many consumers regret Corona purchases
By Diana Dittmer
The privations in the Corona crisis cause a lot of frustrated purchases. Shortly afterwards, however, many consumers no longer have any use for these articles. This buying frenzy is expensive for insurers.
The corona pandemic has changed the consumer behavior of people around the world. Concerns about our own health, home office and homeschooling as well as lockdowns around the globe have not only turned our everyday lives upside down, but also our needs.
On the one hand, consumers had to do without a lot in the almost two years of the pandemic – which was good for the bank account. No trips, no events, no shopping tours – that saved money. On the other hand, consumers have also spent more time trying to compensate for having to do without the leisure activities they loved before Corona with new things. And that cost a lot of money, as a study shows.
According to a survey by British insurer Aviva, households in Great Britain have spent a total of more than £ 6.6 billion on purchases that they no longer want. On average, that’s close to £ 1,400 per person. One in ten regrets their purchases in the pandemic, quoted the BBC from the study “How we live”. Many have already passed on or sold the things.
The list of offsetting purchases is long: it includes play, do-it-yourself and fitness equipment, clothing, jewelry, musical instruments and kitchen equipment, but also garden furniture, pizza ovens and whirlpools. Many of the articles are now gathering dust, according to a study by the world’s fifth largest insurer.
The respondents most frequently described the purchase of game consoles as unnecessary bad investments (45 percent), closely followed by tools (43 percent) and exercise bikes (39 percent). “So much has changed since the beginning of 2020. The way we work, how we interact with others. And with it, apparently, the content of our houses,” quoted BBC customer and marketing director Nicki Charles. Many have been shopping for entertainment in recent months, often costing “hundreds or even thousands of pounds”.
Not only in private households is dissatisfaction with this. The changed consumption and leisure behavior of people plagued by pandemics is also paying dearly for insurers. According to information from Aviva from March, the number of claims for damages for damaged whirlpools in the Corona year 2020 rose by 188 percent compared to the previous year. Significantly more umbrellas fell into the water and the pool covers were destroyed by birds, it is said. The Zurich Insurance Group also registered an increase in claims reports suspected to be related to the pandemic: In August, the insurer reported 16 percent more fires in outbuildings such as garages, sheds and winter gardens. The corona-related trend towards bars on their own property has increased the risk of fire, it is said.
Germans are kicker than other Europeans
For Germany there are no reliable figures on the subject of bad purchases. But there are plenty of reports and social media entriesthat speak for a similar trend. “A switch for lazy rainy days. Now I’m too lazy to even turn it on – it’s a shame,” commented a user in an Instagram survey, for example. The game console should bring entertainment into everyday life. Obviously, the purchase was easier than implementing the game idea in practice.
How annoying such spontaneous purchases are ultimately depends on the cost. A double-digit euro price for Thera bands for physical exercise because sports studios are closed is annoying if the item gets dusty, but manageable. More serious is the acquisition of high-tech equipment such as a Peloton fitness bike, which can easily cost 2000 euros. The corona boom for peloton now seems to be over. It is the awakening time for consumers.
After the fitness equipment manufacturer had to cut its sales forecast for the current fiscal year by up to a billion dollars, the share price also collapsed. The bottom line was that the paper corrected at the beginning of the week by 12.5 percent to 42.60 euros. The management now wants to save costs and is using the red pencil in many areas.
In the summer, when the corona situation eased, consumers found their way back to their old habits such as traveling and using cultural offers, such as eAn international study by the management consultancy Deloitte revealed. According to the survey of adult consumers from 18 countries, this was especially true for German buyers. Purchases for the early evening directly from the home office should therefore no longer be so popular.
The fact that home office is less popular in Germany and that employees in this country are spending more time at work could also slow down the buying frenzy. The Germans Consumers could therefore do a little better financially than the UK. The German citizens are “more resistant to change than the rest of the world”, is the result of a recently published study by the management consultancy Roland Berger. In a global comparison, they are less optimistic about the future. Therefore, they are also more careful. Your bad purchases are likely to be kept within reasonable limits.