Changes in shopping habits during COVID-19

By the start of 2020, the daily and business world had to undergo a radical change with the widespread pandemic known as COVID-19. Many people had to replace their everyday purchase medium to meet the enforced restrictions, and local businesses had to adjust their operations to accommodate the negative impacts brought upon by the disease’s rapid spread. Groceries and FMCG sub-sectors of the retail industry were forced to adapt to consumers’ stockpiling and panic-buying behaviors. We studied the impact of similar purchase attitudes for various product groups during the COVID-19 and probed the differences between sales of online and physical markets. Initially, a cluster analysis identifies which product groups were affected by similar shopping behaviors during the pandemic. Subsequently, the impact of the number of COVID cases on sales levels was measured using stepwise, lasso, and the best subset models. All the models were applied to both physical and online market datasets. The results showed a significant shift from the physical to the online markets during the pandemic. These findings can provide an essential guideline to retail managers in adapting to the new world.