Last week’s Community Uninterrupted session featured an insightful discussion by Quantcast’s Edmund Loh, Customer Strategic Insights Manager and Sam Gottfried, Senior Sales Manager on Canadian consumer interests as we move into the recovery phases of COVID-19. The presentation boded well for two sectors that were hit considerably hard at the onset of the pandemic and the data presented was remarkably consistent to recent Comscore studies indicating that real estate and automotive categories were beginning to pick up momentum. Other areas with encouraging numbers included travel sites, retail and recreation.
There was no doubt about it, Canadians are returning to buying houses and cars as we move into the road to recovery. An interesting look at Apple mobility trends show an increase in Canadians out grocery shopping but a hesitancy to use public transportation to get around. Correlating to these findings, Quantcast presented interesting drilled-down findings on the automotive front.
Two points of consideration included the fact that Canadians love SUV’s and Trucks with purchases increasing from 55% to 75% over passenger cars since the pandemic began and used car buying is shifting to a younger, broader appeal.
With all the focus on automotive, we were interested to hear about tourism in Canada. Canadians are quite fearful of hasty re-openings with 62% fearful of lifting restrictions too early. Not surprisingly, international air travel has taken a significant hit and the data shows that Canadians are most comfortable with domestic travel at the moment with Toronto being cited as the top travel destination.
Gottfried pointed out that understanding the post pandemic consumer will make a major difference in successful communications and media strategies. Getting to the core of what Canadians are searching, consuming and buying online is critical to any brands’ next steps.