Impact of COVID-19 on Chinese Consumers’ Shopping Channels Choice for Daily Necessaries: Evidence from an Online Survey

Abstract

The emergence of the COVID-19 epidemic has significantly impacted consumers’ choice of shopping channels for daily necessities. This study uses the Protective Motivation Theory (PMT) with additional two motivations to explore the factors influencing Chinese consumers’ choices between offline and online channels as the main avenues for purchasing daily necessities across four COVID-19 periods: pre-epidemic, controlled, lockdown, and post-epidemic. A special emphasis is placed on examining the shopping channel preferences transitions between the epidemic phases. We propose mixed-effect logistic regression models to formulate hypothetical relationships among convenience, experience, severity, vulnerability, response efficacy, and self-efficacy, and their effects on channel choice over time. Data was collected through an online survey in China from July to August 2023 with 696 responses. The results show that although there was a shift towards online shopping for daily necessities from the pre-epidemic phase, no significant preference changes were found during the pandemic; however, interestingly there was a notable decline in online shopping in the post-epidemic period. More importantly, experience had a negative effect in the pre-epidemic period and convenience expectations negatively impacted online channel preference since the outbreak. The four PMT-based measures are only significant during the post-epidemic: vulnerability had a positive effect and self-efficacy had a negative effect. This study not only sheds light on consumer adaptation in response to unprecedented circumstances but also provides implications for retailers and policymakers.

Keywords: COVID-19, Shopping channel, Protective Motivation Theory, Daily necessities, Consumers’ motivation, Mixed-effect logistic regression