Affect Heuristics Bias is a mental shortcut that allows people to make decisions and solve problem quickly and efficiently, in which current emotion, fear, pressure, surprise, etc.- influences decisions.
What have we observed?
“Right now, we are all walking around with this heightened state of mortality salience and that creates a sense of existential anxiety. While the effects are harder to predict, it does tend to make people more likely to spend in ways that support their core values and support their self-esteem or to spend in ways that they feel says something important about who they are.”
“Because of this virus, people have heightened mortality salience, which refers to reminding people of their own mortality,” Erica Carranza, vice president of consumer psychology at market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB) says.
What does it mean to marketers?
Moving forward, people may start to make choices that are based on their underlying sense of identity.
For example, people may be more likely to choose environmentally-conscious brands in the future, a trend that we already see in the culture. And it may predispose them to indulge in more luxury purchases as significant to their self-esteem.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2020/03/08/first-comes-panic-buying-but-afterwards-will-the-coronavirus-leave-lasting-changes-to-consumer-psychology/#35e15a6077e8