The Impact of Covid 19 on Consumer’s Online Buying Behavior towards Apparel Brands

Abstract

The novel corona virus (COVID-19) gained pandemic status in 2020 and created a profound and severe impact on the global economy. The corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic has already heavily influenced the way we live. As governments try to minimize the spread of the pandemic, several lockdown restrictions have been imposed that directly affect the way people and businesses operate. One of the sudden changes imposed by lock downs is a higher use of various digital technologies such as internet-based services for communicating, interacting, and working from home. As consumers must change their preferences and shift to online shopping, certain factors have influenced online shopping trends such as customers dissatisfaction due to mismatched expectations or poor product quality. For this research the qualitative data interpretive approach has been used to achieve the objectives of the study, which was to investigate the consumers’ perceptions, purchase intentions, age and gender, role of social media and impact of fashion trends during pandemic on online buying behavior. Interviews were conducted in a semi-structured way. Since consumer behavior has been given a lot of importance in any sector so an inductive approach was very helpful in gathering in depth information from store managers regarding behavior of buyers towards shopping during pandemic. The current study focused on effects of COVID-19 on apparel businesses and consumers response towards buying them through online shopping or in store shopping. This research is significant because it improves the understanding of consumer’s apparel shopping through use of e-commerce. Which in turn helps businesses improve their sale by understanding consumer behavior in more depth. It will help businesses to decide whether they should invest time and money in e-commerce platforms or should go back to the conventional methods of in-store shopping. Future research should consider a variety of product segments and other industries to make sure that the measurement (of consumer online shopping behavior) works equally well. In other industry setting, the measurement may need to be adjusted.