At the start of the decade, consumers adopted a slew of new behaviors—almost overnight—in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote work, digital connectivity, and solo activities became the norm for life in lockdown.
Today, the world has reopened, but the era of uncertainty and its impact on consumers linger.
Globally, consumer sentiment is still poorer on average than it was at the beginning of 2020, and consumers remain concerned about rising prices and inflation. Despite this persistent uncertainty, they keep spending. In fact, the relationship between sentiment and spending has weakened. Meanwhile, consumers’ expectations for value and convenience have them making unexpected trade-offs across categories: trading down in one place while simultaneously splurging on something else. These choices may be confusing to anyone trying to predict what consumers will do next.
It’s not that today’s consumers are irrational; it’s that the old frameworks used to decipher their behavior no longer apply. What once seemed like short-term adaptations born of the COVID-19 pandemic have solidified into lasting behavioral change. As the world heads into the second half of the decade, consumer-facing companies confront new challenges, but being able to understand the motivations of an unpredictable consumer can help them stay agile and relevant.
From an analysis of the McKinsey ConsumerWise Sentiment Survey and State of the Consumer Market Survey data, we have identified five behavioral forces that will shape the sector in the years ahead and four strategic imperatives to position organizations for growth.1 (While growth in emerging markets and global demographic shifts, such as an aging global population and lower average birth rates, are also reshaping the consumer landscape, this article focuses on the sticky consumer behavioral changes that we see affecting the world’s largest markets.)
Five COVID-19-era dynamics that are still shaping the consumer sector
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers adopted new behaviors extremely quickly, and some of those behaviors have endured. To understand how consumers have changed, we conducted the McKinsey ConsumerWise Sentiment Survey among more than 25,000 consumers in 18 markets that together account for around 75 percent of global GDP.2 Their answers, as well as those of participants in the State of the Consumer Market Survey, reveal how today’s consumers spend their time, who they trust, and how they ascribe value.
1. People are spending more time alone and online
The behaviors that consumers adopted for coping with life under COVID-19 lockdown—namely, a reliance on digital connectivity and at-home activities—are now permanent parts of their daily lives. Globally, consumers still spend their time and money differently than they did five years ago. They’re more intent on immediate gratification and convenience and have a higher focus on self than before.
Consider this: US consumers in 2025 report that they have over three hours more of free time a week, on average, than those in 2019 reported.3 But they allocate nearly 90 percent of that time to solo activities. The biggest increases are in time spent enjoying hobbies or relaxing independently, shopping, performing fitness activities, and being on social media. Comparatively, the share of time spent with friends, with family, and on in-person cultural activities (such as going to movies, concerts, and the theater) has remained flat—and therefore decreased as a share of total free time.
This isn’t to say that consumers intentionally try to maximize their alone time. In many ways, remote work and the acceleration of e-commerce have created additional free time in the week and made staying connected easier to do from home. To be sure, there are variations across markets: Consumers in China report spending more of their free time with friends or family and even more time on self-improvement and shopping for pleasure compared with consumers in the United States.
Consumers are also using e-commerce and food delivery services at high rates. Over 90 percent of Chinese and US consumers in our survey say that they shopped at an online-only retailer in the previous month; the same is true for over 80 percent of surveyed consumers in Germany and the United Kingdom.4 Rates for grocery delivery are also high: Nearly 40 percent of German, UK, and US consumers surveyed report that they used grocery delivery in the previous week.5 Over one-third of consumers across all four of these regions identify Amazon or Taobao as their go-to shopping destination for all their needs.6
This growing demand for convenience has cemented a bring-it-to-me mindset that isn’t only reshaping retail but also driving dining and grocery delivery. Food delivery’s share of global food service spending rose from 9 percent in 2019 to 21 percent in 2024. READ MORE
Source: mckinsey.com
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