The Impact of Covid-19 on Consumer Behavior in the Retailing Industry of Lebanon

Abstract

COVID-19 has changed many aspects of human lives. Life was paused for a while and humanity has been exposed to many threats unprepared at most levels. Several studies were conducted to understand human behavior amid crises and their behavior during COVID-19. Panic and spiritual buying dominates the buying behavior. This research investigates the emerged trends to the retail industry amid COVID-19. Several hypotheses were tested to understand the cause and effect relationship between the brick-and-mortar and online shopping. In order to reach a realistic result a quantitative research was conducted and a non-probability convenience sampling method was used where 191 respondents answered the survey questions on a 5 point Likert and nominal scales. It was found that consumer behavior is common across different countries amid COVID-19 with slight variation related to online shopping due to lack of trust with online sources. It was noticed that Lebanese post the pandemic became less price sensitive towards health products as they seek quality and willing to pay more to get it.

Keywords

• covid-19
• retailing industry
• consumer behavior
• online shopping