As the coronavirus reached peak levels earlier this year, my 65-year-old mother—like millions of others across the globe—was forced to make abrupt changes in order to meet the demands of her job safely and effectively.
In addition to donning protective gear, she needed to quickly learn Zoom, Slack and other platforms she had never used before to ensure the elderly residents she served in an assisted living center could communicate with their families.
My mother was a tech-challenged baby boomer who had to quickly assume the social media habits of the digitally savvy Generation Z, roughly 40 years her junior. With that, she became part of a new investment landscape that has proven more complex than many of us realize.
While the sheer force and disruptive nature of coronavirus has sparked explosive growth in many expected ways, such as the surge in streaming and online grocery services, it has complicated the landscape in other, unexpected ways. In addition, it has given the impression it is fueling certain lifestyle changes that have, in fact, been gaining momentum for years.
Why does this matter for investors? It matters because if the pandemic is not viewed in the proper context, it hampers our ability to see how our lives are actually evolving, and to identify a world of opportunities, growth drivers and emerging trends that go far beyond Netflix and Zoom video.
It would be a mistake to view the pandemic as the main accelerant defining our course—or to assume its trajectories take conventional paths. There are demographic changes causing cross-generational identify shifts, such as the one experienced by my mother. There are new intersections of e-commerce, entertainment, education, healthcare, technology and personal growth that are redefining our relationships with our co-workers, families, households and, ultimately, ourselves.
We are all quite familiar by now with the new work-from-home (WFH) trends as they relate to our consumption of digital and virtual technologies, many of which were fueled by quarantining and social distancing requirements.
But distinct from that surge are countless growth areas characterized by increasingly expansive consumer behaviors. This is a much broader “connected consumer” category that includes companies providing products and technology focused on growing consumer capacities in home entertainment, online education, remote health and well-being, and virtual and digital social interaction.
This group includes the soaring popularity of social media platforms, much of which was triggered long before Covid-19. On the entertainment front, it includes companies offering streaming services, gaming and e-sports, which also were experiencing healthy growth before the pandemic boosted their sales.
They represent long-term trends that began before the pandemic and are likely to continue long after. In the same way my mother is likely a lifetime Slack user, my brother-in-law, a big wrestling fan, is not likely to entirely shelve the Zoom events he holds with his friends to watch World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. pay-per-view programs just because the pandemic loosens its grip.