Assessing Buying Decision of Food Products by Customers of an Electronic Commerce Application during Covid-19 Pandemic in Indonesia

Abstract

This study aimed to identify factors influencing the customer behavior of an electronic commerce (e-commerce) application in Indonesia (i.e., Go-Food) during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and to analyze the effects of brand awareness, social media marketing, and COVID-19 social restrictions (pembatasan sosial berskala besar-PSBB) on decisions to shop food products. Data collection was carried by employing a purposive/survey method with questionnaires distributed to the application users. For analyzing the data, the authors employ the structural equation modeling method through the partial least square approach (SEM-PLS). The study results showe: (1) The factors influencing behavior of Go-Food consumer during the COVID-19 pandemic are latent variable aspects and consumer behavior indicator aspects. The influential latent variable aspects consist of social media marketing (0.303), PSBB policy (0.263) and brand awareness (0.208). Concurrently, the influential consumer behavior indicator aspects consist of cultural (0.916) and psychological (0.793) factors. (2) Consumer behavior possesses a positive effect on decisions to shop food (t-count <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{5.034 &gt; t}$</tex> -table 1.96). (3) Brand awareness, the impact of PSBB, and social media marketing possess a positive effect on consumer behavior as indicated by the results of t-counts worth 3.042, 2.842 and 2.828, respectively, which are greater than the t-table value (1.96). (4) Social media marketing is proven to possess a direct or indirect effect on decisions to shop food through Go-food (t-count <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{6.335 &gt; t}$</tex> -table 1.96). Brand awareness possesses no significant direct effect on decisions to shop food through Go-food (t-count <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{1.536 &gt; t}$</tex> -table 1.96).