The Evolution of Kaufland Communication Strategy in Romania during the Pandemic

Retailers strove to find a way to better communicate with consumers between 2020 and 2021. The pandemic raised some walls against their struggles because of people's fear, distrust, and new demands. In the first stage of this unusual lifestyle, buyers looked for new manners of living and even surviving. Then, they tried to adapt to unexpected opportunities to alleviate their daily existence. This study aims to analyse the evolution of Kaufland communication in terms of strategy between March 16, 2020, and December 2021. We wanted to find out how a specific retailer organized its communication in Romania during the pandemic, because taking into consideration that Kaufland is quite successful in the local market, meets most clients' demands, whose opinion about their products is usually positive. Concerning research methods, we conducted a multimodal discourse analysis focused on online ads delivered on Instagram, investigating them at the extralinguistic and linguistic levels. The study aimed to compare the lockdown and the post-lockdown Instagram campaigns to reveal such issues: global and local aspects, the balance between the rational and emotional approach of the retailer, tone of voice, and even main topics. Our purpose consisted in comparing the first pandemic year with the second one when consumers started learning how to deal with this new challenge in their life. The research outcomes confirmed that Kaufland re-considered its position in the Romanian virtual community, helping people to better cope with unexpected hardships in their lives by using corporate social responsibility communication strategies and an emotional approach in most advertising campaigns.