Investigation of Behavioral Sciences for Survival in the Food Industry during the COVID-19 Crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted the beverage industry. It directly causes job losses, reduced income, and changes in customer preferences, and it influences the relationship between franchisors and franchisees. COVID-19 has spread rapidly around the world in the past two years. Meanwhile, the impact has reverberated from abroad to the headquarters of companies in Taiwan. Eight Taiwanese food and beverage brands saw steep drops in sales as the pandemic grew in severity. Thus, it is important to identify the critical elements of running a franchise store. Collected with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technology, the results show that the five key factors in franchises are going direct-to-consumer, establishing a B2B portal for distributors, assessing supply chain elastic limit, optimizing inventory, and streamlining e-commerce to meet changing customer needs. Guidelines and directions are provided for decision-makers through this study to design mobile applications in the simplest platform.

Keywords

• franchisees
• AHP technology
• COVID-19
• beverage industry