Changing Consumer Buying Behavior Due to the Covıd-19 Epidemic: Panic Buying Behavior

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of the Covid-19 epidemic on consumer buying behavior and panic buying behavior in electronic shopping. Design/methodology/approach – An online questionnaire consisting of three parts was used as a data collection tool in the research. In the first part of the questionnaire, general information about consumers was included, in the second part, questions about determining the online shopping situation of consumers during the covid 19 epidemic, and in the last part, the "Panic Buying Scale" consisting of seven statements developed by Lins and Aquino (2020). In the research, using the snowball sampling method, the online questionnaire prepared through Google forms was applied to 882 people on a voluntary basis, and 16 questionnaires were not included in the research due to incorrect/incomplete filling. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS 26 program. Findings – According to the results of the analysis, it has been determined that the panic buying behavior of individuals differs according to their education level. In addition, during the epidemic, the majority of the participants preferred to shop online because it was easy to buy and save time, the most preferred e-commerce sites were Trendyol, the most demanded products were clothing, personal care, electronic products and food products, respectively, and credit payments were made. It has been determined that the most used cargo company is Yurtiçi Kargo, which uses the card (by entering a password), and that many participants did not encounter any problems in their purchases from e-commerce sites in this process. Discussion – When the studies are examined, it is seen that there are many studies on the purchasing behavior of consumers in their online shopping, but there are very few studies examining the panic buying behavior of individuals during the pandemic period. For this reason, it is thought that this research will make an important contribution to the literature in the related field.