The death of 'wait your turn': How COVID trauma created instant gratification consumers and changed marketing forever
From pandemic scarcity, Buy Now Pay Later, millionaires through TikTok Shop and same day delivery expectations: A deep dive into why patience is dead and speed has become the new success metric
It's been five years since the start of the pandemic and consumer behaviour has changed a lot, yet some businesses are still years behind when it comes to how they sell and market.
I've analysed how the trauma of scarcity and waiting during lockdowns might have created behavioural changes that are now driving purchasing decisions.
The question today is: “Are we seeing impatience or simply more options not to wait?”
Buy now pay later schemes, instant health solutions like Ozempic, TikTok live shopping, have created consumers who expect instant everything. Over 70% are more likely to purchase from retailers offering same-day delivery, and over 90% of clicks happen on Google's first page alone.
If your SEO strategy didn't land you on page one, your competitors are taking all those customers.
The implications for your business run deeper. Gen Z and younger Gen Alpha expect immediate returns, they're starting businesses young, bypassing traditional education, and have grown up in a virality world where success appears instant. This fundamentally alters their expectations of every brand interaction.
For them, everything must happen now. If your brand can't deliver it, they'll find one that will.
Let’s talk about it.
The COVID Impact:
This behaviour didn't just come out of nowhere. I'm sure there are multiple factors from the inflation, financial anxiety and wanting to spend now when you have the money rather than later but I wonder how much COVID changed things around.
Remember when people were fighting for tissue rolls? Fighting for baby milk? It was a traumatic time for many people who were furloughed or brutally fired and had to rush to get things.
You could get there and bam things had disaapered.
And then some days there would be queues and queues of people which prevented them from getting things in time. Now that the world is "back to normal," I wonder how much impact all that waiting, shipment delays and waiting had on the brain.
What happened during COVID wasn’t just inconvenient, it was psychological conditioning. When essentials were scarce, our brains began associating waiting with potential loss. This created a lasting sense of scarcity anxiety, which psychologists now link to a behavioural shift in how we shop.
Behavioural economist Dan Ariely calls this response “irrational urgency”, a stress reaction triggered by uncertainty and fear of missing out. During COVID, that urgency became embedded in consumer decision-making. Today, instant access isn’t just convenient, it’s psychologically reassuring.
The result? A generation that views instant access not as luxury, but as necessity for peace of mind.
We're already seeing the shift across multiple industries. In retail, businesses are moving from traditional in-store experiences to one-click convenience and banking and financial services are rebuilding trust in milliseconds through biometric authentication for instant login.
Decision Fatigue:
Ariely's research also explains another important factor: decision fatigue intensifies when consumers face both too many choices AND uncertainty about timing. Studies show that under stress or when overwhelmed by choice, consumers are more likely to make impulsive decision, opting for 'good enough now' instead of 'perfect later.'
This is why brands that offer instant gratification often see higher conversion rates, they’re not just selling speed, they’re reducing cognitive load and decision fatigue.
BNPL usage has risen, searches are up 577% in 5 years, and tools like Klarna, Afterpay, and Sezzle are now expected, not optional.
With inflation and financial anxiety lingering, shoppers are looking for flexibility and control at checkout, so we've seen a rise in buy now pay later schemes. From Blinkit in India to services like Instacart and DoorDash expanding beyond food to include everything from pharmacy items to office supplies, once consumers experience instant gratification in one category, they start expecting it everywhere.
The New Path to Purchase
The entire concept of a consideration funnel is breaking down. Consumers now expect to go from discovery to purchase in seconds, not days.
Social commerce searches are up 65% over the last 5 years and nearly half of consumers are buying directly on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Shoppable content + real-time engagement = a whole new path to purchase, which means static ads are out and interactive, entertainment-first commerce is in.
P Louise's £2M TikTok UK livestream is the perfect case study.
The Downside of Instant:
But what does the instant way of living do? It means things can easily be missed.
Wanting things now can lead to taking the first offer, not reading properly, not asking important questions.
But the instant economy has a cost: regret from rushed decisions, rising fraud in BNPL schemes, and sustainability concerns from fast delivery and fast fashion. Return rates are 40% higher for instant purchases, and carbon footpfrints grow with every partially filled delivery van.
Not Competing on Speed? Make That Your Strength.
For brands that choose not to participate in the instant gratification race, success still lies ahead but it must come from clear differentiation, not stagnation/resistatnce for the sake of it. There is a growing segment of consumers, particularly in luxury, sustainability, and heritage markets, who seek depth over immediacy.
These consumers value craftsmanship, intentionality, and ethical practices over speed.
If your brand is slower by design, make that part of your narrative. Transparency, quality, and storytelling become your advantage.
McKinsey supports this shift: in a study of 25,000 consumers, they found tolerance for friction is decreasing while speed expectations are rising.
In other words, consumers will continue to raise the bar. They want the speed and add low cost, reliability, and the ability to make returns to their expectations.
Risk Assessment for Brands
High-risk indicators your brand is falling behind:
Checkout process takes more than 3 steps
No mobile payment options available
Customer service response time over 4 hours
No social commerce presence
Delivery times longer than competitors
Cost of inaction:
Customer acquisition costs increase by 25-40%
Cart abandonment rates spike above 70%
Brand perception scores decline among under-35 demographics
Market share erosion to more agile competitors
And that is something brands should take into consideration because if you're not simplifying your content, making it accessible then you will get missed. Even product placement and your CTAs must be more obvious than ever.
Customer centricity must be at the heart of your marketing, in other words asking what prolongs the sales cycle of the purchase? Is it the messaging, the feature placement, the payment options?
Customers are fragmented into many sections, who are you targeting? I genuinely believe it's time to be more specific with the ICP.
But I want to caveat by saying despite simplifying the messaging to ensure it fits with the fast pace of how customers are behaving, this doesn't mean dumbing down the messaging in a patronising way.
The Fragmented Consumer Landscape
According to McKinsey, '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 whilst simultaneously splurging on something else. These choices may be confusing to anyone trying to predict what consumers will do next.'
This is exactly why your traditional demographic targeting is failing you.
As a Gen Z myself, I'm married and planning a family, while my closest friends are globe-trotting, child-free, or navigating career pivots. We’re the same age, but in completely different life stages. That’s why broad generational targeting doesn’t work. When brands market to ‘Gen Z’ as one uniform group, they miss us all.
Micro-Segmentation Framework
Gen Z Pragmatists: Focused on financial security, homeownership, family planning
Gen Z Explorers: Prioritising travel, experiences, personal growth
Gen Z Entrepreneurs: Building businesses, side hustles, personal brands
Gen Z Minimalists: Sustainable living, mindful consumption, quality over quantity
Life Stage Over Age Framework
Rather than rigid age brackets, consider these cross-generational segments:
New Parents: Need instant but cost-effective solutions across all generations
Digital Nomads: Value speed and global accessibility regardless of age
Sandwich Generation: Juggling multiple responsibilities, premium for convenience
Empty Nesters: Time-rich but seeking quality and ease
Career Builders: Fast-paced lives requiring efficiency tools
Each segment has completely different instant gratification triggers and spending patterns.
Gen Z's feelings about the world differ from those of older generations, too.
According to the McKinsey survey, Gen Zers across markets are less likely than members of older generations to define themselves based on life stage milestones, such as getting married and having children. They're much more likely, however, to define themselves based on achievements related to financial security, such as career success and creating wealth (73 percent and 36 percent more likely than members of older generations, respectively).
In any case, Gen Zers' financial fears aren't holding them back from spending. Half of surveyed US Gen Z consumers (and 35 percent of those in Germany and the United Kingdom, but only 8 percent of those in China) state that they don't have enough money saved to support their lifestyle for more than one month, yet they still prioritise spending.
One thing that brands should keep in mind: Gen Zers often pay a premium for convenience.
So, what is the best advice?
So what do you do with all of this information?
Step 1:
Micro-segment your audience: Move beyond broad demographics to specific life stages and instant needs. Stop targeting "millennials" and start targeting "millennial new parents" or "millennial career switchers" and each segment has different speed expectations and purchase triggers
Step 2:
Partner with local delivery services: Explore same-day delivery options in key markets, customers will choose competitors who deliver faster, even at higher prices and local partnerships reduce costs while meeting speed expectations
Step 3:
Implement live chat/instant support - Reduce response times to under 1 hour. In the instant economy, waiting for email responses feels like abandonment and AI-powered initial responses with human escalation paths
Step 4: Optimize for Speed vs. Consideration
A/B test instant vs. traditional funnels - Measure conversion differences Track cart abandonment rates, completion times, and customer satisfaction. Remember some products benefit from quick purchasing, others need consideration time
Brands that understand this change in consumer psychology, where instant access equals peace of mind, will thrive. Those clinging to traditional funnels and patient customer journeys will find themselves irrelevant.
The question isn't whether your customers want instant gratification; it's whether you're prepared to deliver it while maintaining the quality, service, and values that build long-term loyalty.
Success in the instant economy requires more than speedm it demands empathy, agility, and clarity. Instant access now equals peace of mind. If you're not meeting that need, your competitors are.