From loo roll to hot tubs: The story of Britain’s lockdown, in 10 consumer trends

You can tell a lot about a nation by looking at its buying habits. So what have 10 weeks of lockdown told us about Britain?

Our buying habits have changed wildly during the pandemic
Our buying habits have changed wildly during the pandemic

J Alfred Prufrock measured his out with coffee spoons. Tracey Emin let an unmade bed speak for hers. But is there an item, or set of items, that could sum up British life over the past 10 weeks?

Decent candidates are probably all around you. Perhaps you’re reading this in a fort made from some of the 92-pack of loo rolls you bought in a frenzy one March day and still haven’t made a dent in. Maybe you’re in your new garden hot tub, on your box-fresh exercise bike, having your head shaved with clippers, or impatiently waiting for another bag of bread flour to arrive. Consider this: how many of those things could you have imagined owning this time last year?

Consumer habits tend to reveal a nation’s state of mind, and during the coronavirus lockdown, Britain’s shoppers have slalomed from panic to prepping, boredom to aspiration, acceptance to future planning. At every emotional stage, a spike in sales for particular items can be registered, as well as a few curiosities.

“It has been extremely interesting to see,” Dr Dimitrios Tsivrikos, a consumer and business psychologist at University College London, says. “Experts couldn’t have guessed exactly what would happen, but in shopping habits, humans are to some extent predictable: we fight to survive, then we nest, then we plan and adapt.”

It has been a rollercoaster, and it’s still not over. But in 10 weeks, with 10 buying trends, here is the story of lockdown life in Britain.

 

Week One

After an initial, and understandable, rush on hand sanitizer and cleaning products in mid-March, it was images of supermarket trolleys heaving with multipacks of loo roll that came to sum-up how British shoppers were responding to a looming crisis: with panic.

According to Kantar WorldPanel, even in the first week of March, toilet paper sales increased by 60 per cent year-on-year, while Amazon reported a 100 per cent spike. By the end of the month, despite no evidence that coronavirus symptoms required more paper, fights were starting in supermarkets and deliveries were even reported stolen.

“That one was fascinating, because it was such a conspicuous product,” says Philip Graves, a consumer psychologist. “If people had bought 16 tins of sardines it wouldn’t have been so obvious, but when you see extra loo roll in someone’s trolley you notice. Then you see emptier shelves and panic. Then others do the same, the media report it, and regardless of the fact extra wasn’t needed, the implicit message was that people are stocking up, so you should too.”

 

Week Two

Loo roll stuffed into one cupboard, pasta and tinned tomatoes in another, next it was time to get resourceful, and that meant making bread. Sales of flour rose (must have found some yeast, then) by 92 per cent by the end of March, with mills working overtime to keep up with demand. “This was partly a recreational activity, but it was also fight or flight, or what’s known as ‘action bias’ – you’d rather do something than nothing, like a goalkeeper choosing to dive for a penalty even if stats say he’d be better off staying still. We have evolved like this, and making bread fills time, gives us a staple we can store, and is something that, in a way, protects the family,” Graves says.

 

Week Three 

Baking bread is all well and good, but it’s not everyone’s idea of an afternoon well-spent. Other people – a lot of other people – preferred more traditional ways to waste time. Sales of puzzles increased by 223 per cent, and Lego sets by 240 per cent. A lot of those purchases were for children stuck inside and off-school from March 22, but adults joined in too.

Graves, while eager to point out that video games and Netflix subscriptions also rose, notes our reversion to what might have passed time for us in decades past. “People aren’t desperately imaginative, so we go back to what is familiar,” he says, “we try and find things that can generate a sense of reward.”

 

Week Four

After the initial survival phase, Tsivrikos says we moved towards “nesting”, meaning an attempt to “build new ways of surviving, and merging two realities [our lives before and after the pandemic started] so we can begin to adapt.” A key part of this was finding out just how we can continue to work while in lockdown. Cue a spike in search interest for home office equipment, with particular emphasis on phrases like “best home office desks and chairs.”

 

Week Five

Perhaps those creaking people looking for a home office chair with firm back support and an ergonomic design could benefit from a foam roller, or a yoga mat, or a Pilates balance ball? All those things – and rowing machines, treadmills, and so on – were in demand as fitness equipment sales soared by 170 per cent. Maybe they wanted to burn off all that bread.

“Some of this was aspirational,” Graves says, “it’s obviously important we stay fit during all this, which has always been true, but people were now really talking about getting fit.” Later, interest in tennis rackets and fishing gear exploded when those activities were permitted again.

 

Week Six

Six weeks in, at least six weeks’ hair growth, and all barbers and hairdressers still prevented from opening by lockdown restrictions. Naturally, we took matters into our own hands. John Lewis reported a 200 per cent spike in sales of hair clippers, with a representative describing “unprecedented demand.” Necessity was the driver, but it was also the first sign Britain was moving to a new phase in Tsivrikos’s cycle: “planning for how we might live from now on.” Who needs hairdressers when you can master doing it yourself? Easier said than done, as many found out.

 

Week Seven 

You may be surprised to see this so late on, as a marked increase in drinking was noted from the very start of lockdown. Indeed, online search traffic has been high throughout – but confirmation of our thirstiness came in late April, when the Office for National Statistics said alcohol-focused stores saw a 31 per cent surge in sales volumes. “People wanted to make themselves feel good, and achieve a psychological equilibrium,” Graves says. Too right: there was a terrifying pandemic on. We’re allowed a drink.

 

Week Eight

Right: we’ve done our puzzles, the work chair is in place, and now the sun is out but we’re still being encouraged to stay inside. What to do? Get in the garden, of course. With many enjoying the extra disposable income that came with saving on holidays, weddings, dinners out and the like, we were happy to redirect some funds to a staycation in our own homes.

It was reported this week that sales of (often expensive) hot tubs are up 490 per cent on eBay, and almost every style is sold out at Argos. “We’re spending more time at home, so we might as well,” is the mentality, Graves says. “People are traditionally more short term than they’d like to believe. We’re not massive planners [and] many are in the position where they have fewer things to spend on this summer, so they’re feeling better off.”

 

Week Nine

Two wheels, and a two-pronged theory as to why we’re all getting on our bikes. In recent weeks the weather has been beautiful and the roads quieter, coupled with the established facts of more time and an emphasis on fitness, encouraging us to cycle. But the reported 40 per cent rise no bike sales is also a sign we’re thinking about the future: in the ‘new normal’, will public transport be a wise option? “From an evolutionary perspective, it’s us being rational, adapting to our environment,” Tsivrikos says. “Again, it is us considering that question: ‘How will we live now?’”

 

Week Ten

Unsurprisingly, two and a half months locked in our homes has caused us to notice one or two things we’d change. That lamp. Those curtains. Why don’t we finally put up those shelves? And so to B&Q, Homebase, DIY stores and – as photographs of queues on Monday illustrate – to Ikea. Some shoppers waited for four hours to get into the Swedish one-way flatpack haven this week. “It’s perfectly possible to spend time in your home in normal times without really noticing it,” Graves says. The lockdown was a big change in all our lives, “but it doesn’t take much for us to pause and suddenly become more mindful of things. Then we act.” And then we spend.

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