An interdisciplinary approach to consumer purchasing in the condition of the crisis: with emphasis on COVID-19

Abstract

The emergence of some prominent political, economic, social, and biological crises plays a vital role in changing the behavior of human society. In this regard, the preventive and controlling actions of the Corona crisis, which require a comprehensive, systematic and multidimensional approach, have led to changes in consumers’ purchasing behavior. What is important in this regard is the need to use an interdisciplinary perspective (economics, management, marketing, psychology and sociology) to understand this complex phenomenon. To this end, this article has been conducted using a qualitative approach and with the aim of modeling consumer purchasing behavior in the condition of the Corona virus (COVID-19) crisis, with a multidimensional approach. The methods include of: review of specialized databases, observation, and in-depth interviews with 28 key informants that validity and reliability of them had been confirmed, were used for data gathering. Results showed that the predictive model of the demand situation for Corona's post-crisis goods or services depends on 3 indicators: "the nature of the good or service" and "the level of human interaction in exchange" as well as "income level". Moreover, complete deletion; delayed purchase; purchase substitution; and the relative decline in purchases are the four behavioral categories that consumers adopt during the Corona Crisis, and this model depends on a variety of variables. Finally, the necessary recommendations, with an approach influenced by different areas of knowledge, were presented in the form of a model during the Corona crisis in line with changes in the marketing mix (4P).

Keywords

• purchasing behavior
• crisis management
• corona virus
• covid-19
• consumer behavior
• interdisciplinary approach