- 44% of Romanians pay their utilities invoices online and this is the habit they want to keep after the restrictions of circulations will end too;
- Aprox. 35% of the respondents work from home;
- Telemedicine has been adopted by 4% in just six weeks of social isolation, quite a good start.
Telekom Romania ran a survey to figure how the consumers’ behaviour has changed and what will be the new consuming habits.
Apps to work from home
The enforcing of the state of emergency has significantly changed the working ways. According to the survey, over 34.7% of respondents work from home.
They mainly use Skype to communicate with their teams (22,9% of respondents). The second place in popularity belongs to Zoom application with 20,6% of responses, followed by Microsoft Teams with 11.9%, Google Hangouts with 11.5%, Skype for business with 7.6% and WhatsApp with 5.6%.
Facebook is the most used social platform
When we talk about spending time on social networks, Facebook remains the preferred platform for 35.5% of respondents.
In second place is YouTube (28.9%), then the other applications: Instagram (11.2%), TikTok (6%), Pinterest (4.8%), Reddit (4.7%), LinkedIn (4.2%), Snapchat (3.7%) and Twitter with (2.8%).
Telecommunications services used in the current context
The Internet is the most used communications service used by 38.6% of respondents. 34.4% of them use mobile telephony, 24.3% use television service and only 0.7% use fixed telephony.
These behaviours are also visible in relation to Telekom services and products. In the first 2 weeks of April, the traffic on the telekom.ro site increased by 77%, compared to February of the same year.
Online payments versus offline payments
The circulation restrictions have led to the adoption of online payments for utility and service invoices.
Thus, 44% of respondents pay all bills online, 30.7% online, but also physically, and 25.3% pay them only physically, because, in their opinion, this type of payment gives them security.
Bare necessity online shopping versus bare necessity offline shopping
According to Eurostat, in 2019, 23% of the population shopped online, and now even in the current general context, 55% of respondents continue to go shopping in physical stores, taking the protection measures recommended by the authorities, 27,1% made their supplies in time and do not go to the store so often, 25.3% do their shopping in physical stores, but also online and only 7.8% turned exclusively to suppliers to purchase their necessities.
As a frequency, 43.4% go shopping once or twice a week, 38.5% less than once a week, 6.6% of respondents go shopping every day, 1.4% of 5-6 times a week and 10.1% 3-4 times a week.
Half of those who responded to the survey mainly use a mobile phone to place an order, 42.2% use a laptop or desktop and only 7.4% use a tablet.
The activities of spending time at home
Among the activities at home, the online survey revealed that in the current general context: 72% of respondents said they spend their free time with family activities, 58% watch TV series and movies, 31% learn new things, 23% do sports at home, 11% run in the vicinity of the house and 7% have other activities.
Medical non-emergencies
A premiere that confirms the global trends is the gradual adoption of telemedicine, with 4% of respondents saying they use this way of caring for their personal health.
For non-medical emergencies during this period, 61,1% of respondents said they use the advice of a family doctor, 23.9% wait until the restrictions are lifted to go to the doctor, 14.2% call the approved phone numbers, 11.8% use the medical application on the phone, 5.5% take protective measures and go to the hospital.
Which of the digital habits do the Romanians intend to keep
The respondents to the online survey also stated which are the digital habits they want to keep after the relaxation of the circulation restrictions: online payment of bills is also the digital habit that most Romanians would like to maintain in the future. (59% of respondents), followed by online shopping (42.7%) and 24.5% would like to keep in touch with doctors remotely (through applications or telemedicine).
