International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume VI, Issue XI, November 2022|ISSN 2454-6186
Impact of the covid-19 Pandemic on the Shopping Behavior of University Students
Georgios Polydoros
Department of Mathematics & Applied Mathematics, University of Crete, Greece
Abstract: The covid-19 pandemic has evolved e-commerce and accelerated the existing trends in the adoption of e-commerce by a significant portion of consumers. The governments, in their effort to limit the spread of the virus, imposed quarantine and restrictive measures on the movements of citizens. Thus, consumers turned to online shopping to satisfy their purchasing needs.
This paper examines the behavior of Greek university students towards online and mobile shopping.
The paper mentions the new trends created by the pandemic in e-commerce globally and nationally.
The purpose of this work was to study the effect of the covid-19 pandemic on the purchasing behavior of university students in the island of Crete, Greece. For this reason, a Google Forms questionnaire was created.
The results of the survey showed that Greek university students increased their purchases through e-shopping and male students continued to purchase more than female students in the current era.
Keywords: e-commerce, shopping habits, mobile shopping, online shopping, university students
I. INTRODUCTION
It is a common finding among scholars that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a remarkable increase in online shopping around the world. Consumers show an increasing tendency to use electronic shopping through smart mobile phones (mobile shopping), thus making this environment more competitive compared to the environment of electronic shopping through a computer (online shopping) (JungLee, 2017). Many point out that this trend will continue, at a more even pace, in the post-covid-19 era (Zwanka & Buff, 2020).
The covid-19 pandemic is characterized as turning point in human history and the world’s consumer habits (Keane & Neal, 2021), shaping a new generation (Zwanka & Buff, 2020). This generation will be more aware of environmental protection and ecology in general. Consequently, new products and services will emerge as a result of the needs of the new generation of consumers (Mehta et al., 2020).
Di Crosta et al. (2021) focused on the psychological consequences of the covid-19 pandemic in relation to people’s consumption habits. They point out that many consumers, trying to find a way out of the psychological pressure due to the pandemic and the restrictive measures, were led to online purchases of necessary but and unnecessary goods.