How Pandemics like the Covid 19 Impact Consumer Behavior (Essay Sample)

HOW PANDEMICS LIKE COVID 19 IMPACT CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
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How Pandemics like COVID 19 Impact Consumer Behavior
Introduction
There is no doubt that the outbreak of global pandemics impacts human lives virtually in all aspects and the latest outbreak of Covid 19 serves the best example of how global pandemics affect how humans behave in the event of their outbreaks. Although human consumption is considered to be habitual, it can also be contextual under the influence of inevitable ad hoc natural calamities such as global pandemics. Thus, this paper will analyze how the outbreak of pandemics with particular reference to the Covid 19 impacts consumer behaviors.[Jagdish Sheth, "Impact of Covid-19 on consumer behavior: Will the old habits return or die?" Journal of Business Research 117 (2020), 280-283. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7269931/.]
Restricted Places of Shopping
As a result of the enforced standard operating procedures such as social distancing and lockdown measures implemented to curb the spread of the Covid 19 virus, consumers now have restricted choices of the places where they shop. Covid 19 has caused both mobility shortage and mobility shift restrictions which correspondingly has impacted the consumers’ consumption behavior. In due course, consumers have resorted to online shopping because of the mobility shortages and to further observe the social distancing and lockdown measures imposed by their respective state governments.[Mahesh H. Puttaiah and Aakash K. Raverkar, "All change: how COVID-19 is transforming consumer behaviour." Swiss Research institute. Last modified 2020. https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/topics-and-risk-dialogues/health-and-longevity/covid-19-and-consumer-behaviour.html.]
Increased Hoarding Behaviors
Hoarding is an ordinary behavior practiced by business people and suppliers during the outbreak of pandemics to manage the future uncertainty of the supply of human basic needs. Besides hoarding, gray markets usually emerge in which opportunistic middlemen hoard certain products and hike their prices. For example, this practice has been common during the outbreak of Covid 19 with regards to the supply of personal protection equipment like N95 masks, and hand sanitizers. Lastly, the high demand caused as a result of hoarding usually results into sell of fake products at cheaper prices as an alternative to the basic and primary products.[Jagdish Sheth, "Impact of Covid-19 on consumer behavior: Will the old habits return or die?" Journal of Business Research 117 (2020), 280-283. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7269931/.]
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