PurposeMarketing is all about understanding your consumers and giving them what they want. However, this process becomes more complicated in times of economic crisis and national slowdown. Consumers can become scattered and unpredictable in their behaviour, making it hard to understand what they want or need. At times like these, it is more important than ever to rely on qualitative market research to understand the views of consumers and managers. Thus, this study aims to look at the significant consumer challenges that arise during times of crisis and the marketing strategies that managers prefer to counter the crisis. Design/methodology/approachThe data collected for this study involves an extensive literature review followed by personal interviews with industry experts. This study presents two separate models, indicating hierarchical relationships among consumer challenges during crisis and marketing strategies using the total interpretive structural modelling approach. Further MICMAC analysis (popularly known as cross-impact matrix multiplication) was also performed to assess each variable's driving and dependence power. Findings{''}Price sensitiveness{''} and ``adaptive buying{''} result as driving factors with the highest driving and lowest dependence power, which further gives rise to other consumer behaviour challenges. Likewise, the most critical strategies are ``information systems{''} and the formation of ``crisis management teams{''} during a crisis. At the same time, other strategies have resulted as linkage and dependent factors and none as the autonomous factor. Originality/valueThis paper provides a systematic understanding of how a manager can understand the challenges consumers face during a crisis and suggests a powerful summary of strategies companies can implement to sail through a crisis.