PSYCHOLOGY

In a Pandemic, We Buy
What We Know
by Chelsea Galoni, Gregory S. Carpenter and Hayagreeva Rao
NOVEMBER 25, 2020

Illustration by Rocio Egio

Back in May, Unilever’s CEO predicted that consumers would eat healthier during the Covid-19
pandemic. Meanwhile, the CEO of McDonald’s remains confident they’ll return to Big Macs and other
familiar favorites.

Certainly, both can’t be right.

Or can they?

Organic and healthy food sales are in fact surging — but so are sales of cookies and salty snacks. After
years of struggling to win over increasingly health-conscious consumers, well-known brands such as
Oreos and Doritos have been selling more than ever in the last several months, and McDonald’s Drive
Thru business is booming.

So what’s going on?

Evolutionary psychology offers a simple explanation: humans are wired to feel powerful emotions in
response to contagious diseases, and these emotions affect consumer behavior in surprising ways.
Our recent large-scale analyses and lab experiments confirmed that simultaneous surges in sales of

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 both Big Macs and kale salads are logical expressions of two key emotions that consumers are
experiencing right now: disgust and fear.

We’re Wired to Avoid Disease

Past research has shown that people react to indications of contagious disease with disgust: we
instinctively move away from someone sneezing in a crowded train car; we avoid people coughing
violently on the street.

But it’s not just a matter of being repulsed. The possibility of contracting a contagious disease also
elicits fear and a sense of loss of control, pushing us to seek the familiar and avoid the foreign.

To better understand the links between disease, emotion, and purchasing behaviors, we performed
two large empirical analyses using data from the CDC, Google Flu Trends, and Nielsen, as well as four
lab experiments examining how the presence of disease affected both emotional state and household
purchases in four product categories: paper towels, junk food, soup, and batteries. In our
experiments, we had participants read about either a contagious disease (the flu) or a non-contagious
disease (heart failure), and then tested their preferences for familiar versus unknown products.

Fear and Disgust Impact Purchasing Behavior

The results confirmed our hypothesis: thinking about a contagious disease increased both fear and
disgust, and in response to these emotions, the participants attempted to regain control by seeking
out the familiar brands they knew and trusted. Without even realizing it, people have been doing
whatever they can to assert control over a chaotic world — and that extends to their decisions in the
food aisle.

Specifically, our empirical analyses found that households bought more of all the products we
studied when disease was more present in their area, but they bought more familiar products at
disproportionately higher rates. These findings can help to explain recent purchasing trends.

Booming organic foods sales may be appear to be at odds with long lines at the McDonald’s Drive
Thru, but our analysis suggests that these two seemingly-inconsistent trends are in fact reflections of
the same emotional state: In the face of a contagious disease that elicits fear and disgust, consumers
turn to the most familiar options (whether that’s health food or junk food).

Even when there are no rational reasons to turn down unfamiliar options, our findings suggest that
consumers are increasingly favoring familiar brands in many different product categories. For
example, while people have been stocking up on more soup across the board during the pandemic,
sales of more familiar soup brands such as Campbell’s have risen disproportionately. Similarly, our
analyses found that right now, people are more likely to put traditional Oreos in their cart, rather
than the trying out the latest new flavor. In the face of so much constant fear, an unfamiliar Oreo
seems to be a risk that many consumers are simply unwilling to take.

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 Marketers, Take Note
What do these trends mean for brand marketers?

For one, while innovation is generally a good thing, right now might not the best time to start getting
creative with consumer products. While you may be excited about advertising the latest potato chip
or ice cream flavor, you might be better off waiting for a time when consumers are feeling a little less
fearful.

On the product strategy side, our findings demonstrate the importance of focus. Restaurants and
manufacturers may be facing capacity constraints due to social distancing requirements, but those
limitations can also have a positive effect: they force organizations to concentrate on the products
that consumers value most. The most successful companies have focused resources on their
traditional bestsellers to meet increasing demand for these familiar products, rather than investing in
new product lines or sales strategies. For example, after rolling back to a limited menu with just its
most-cherished products, McDonald’s reversed a decline in sales that began in 2013, and growth in its
stock price has outpaced the S&P 500 since March.

In normal times, customers often make purchasing decisions based on practical considerations such
as a product’s healthiness, value, or price. But when consumers feel uncertain or afraid, these
practical concerns can become overwhelmed by their emotional reactions. In the face of a contagious
disease in particular, fear and disgust shift people’s natural desire for familiarity and predictability
into overdrive — meaning that Big Macs become more popular again and Oreos fly off the shelf, even
as sales of organic food surge. Understanding how emotions influence consumers choices is key to
developing an effective marketing and sales strategy — during the pandemic and beyond.

Chelsea Galoni earned her PhD from the Kellogg School of Management and is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the
Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa.

Gregory S. Carpenter is Harold T. Martin Professor of Marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of
Management. Co-author of Resurgence: The Four Stages of Market-Focused Reinvention, he is co-host Kellogg’s annual
Marketing Leadership Summit, where thought leaders explore the future of marketing.

Hayagreeva Rao, a former faculty member at the Kellogg School of Management, is Atholl McBean Professor of
Organizational Behavior & Human Resource Management at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He is the
co-author of Scaling up Excellence and the co-director of Stanford’s Designing Organizational Change Project.

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