Abstract
We summarize the exploration results from a survey study that asks Canada and U.S. consumers questions related to their acquisition and processing of information related to the COVID-19 pandemic, situation assessment at the beginning of outbreak, as well as food shopping and stocking behavior during the lockdown. Our analyses identified unique factors influencing consumers’ situation assessment and stockpiling decisions that are going along with the emerging social and cultural trends over the past two decades. These include the wide reach of internet-based media, multiple sources of information in terms of different media types, media languages as well as communication across country borders towards an individual’s immigration and other ethnicity background. Information obtained from social media sources is found to have statistically different impact on the initial situation assessment between Canada and U.S. customers. But learning COVID-19 news from non-English media source significantly increases the seriousness perception of consumers from both countries. Information acquisition from multiple language sources also makes a Canadian customer more likely to stockpiling food items. Consumers’ food stocking behavior from both countries are under the influence of societal and economic factors such as job security. Findings from our research contribute to the ongoing global efforts in mitigating COVID-19’s negative impact by generating effective policy and strategic recommendations for government and business communities to implement collaborative and constructive actions under the global pandemic.
Highlights
1.1 BackgroundThe impact of COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown which had been taking place across the globe were unprecedentedly striking for the society worldwide
The primary focus of this research paper is on North American consumers‟ stockpiling behavior during COVID-19 and the exploration and identification of unique informational and social drivers which were different from previous outbreaks within this century
Using results from a multi-round survey administered on Qualtrics survey platform towards Canadian and U.S participants recruited through Amazon Mechanic Turk (MTurk) cloud service, we present empirical evidences that the growing reach of online media over the past two decades are having much more significant influences on consumers‟ initial assessment regarding the seriousness of COVID-19 pandemic in comparison to traditional media types
Summary
1.1 BackgroundThe impact of COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown which had been taking place across the globe were unprecedentedly striking for the society worldwide. Extensive research in business and economics have classified consumer stockpiling as an unconventional loss-avoidance shopping behavior under environmental stress/ uncertainty (Helsen & Schmittlein, 1992; Azadegan, Patel, Zangoueinezhad, & Linderman, 2013; Barello, 2014). It was certainly the case under the current COVID-19 pandemic. First weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown in many cities of Canada have witnessed striking themes as food and other products flew off store shelves as fast as (or even faster than) they could be stacked (Bogart, 2020). Statistics Canada has recorded percentage increases in sales for a wide range of food products for the week ending in mid-March 2020 in comparison to the average level in 2019, with some increases (e.g. frozen fruits, frozen vegetable) over 120%!
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