Consumer Sustainable Shopping Practices for Small Business during COVID-19

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to understand the factors that attract consumers to small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic to assist with small businesses. Factors of interest included emotional (positive and negative) and cognitive experiences (resilience, optimism) during the pandemic and demographic characteristics (gender, generation, education, income, and employment status). Using a convenience survey sample in U.S. (N = 315), this study found that positive and negative emotions, active resilience, and demographic characteristics (generation, education, income, and employment status) can explain consumer shopping frequency and number of services used with small businesses during a pandemic. Small businesses may seek to trigger active resilience and emotions (negative and positive) in their marketing/advertising avenues to attract consumers’ sustainable consumption practices and may consider pivoting to attract particular consumer segments that are more likely to lend favorable actions toward sustainable consumption.

Analyzing Academic Discourse Evolution on Consumer Behavior and COVID-19 Using Topic Modeling

“…These authors highlighted the potential of bringing these spaces online to contribute to sustainability in the face of system shocks such as during the covid-19 pandemic. Ha et al (2021) found that consumers who were resilient during the pandemic, that is, were able to recover quickly after a crisis, were more likely to patronize small businesses, thus contributing to their survival.…”

“…The pandemic brought as a consequence a change in the priorities of consumers, generating new purchasing behaviors to cope with the uncertainty of the pandemic, demonstrating greater concern for the social and ecological, and supporting efforts to achieve sustainability and well-being of the society in this new economic environment (Sharma et al, 2021). As covid-19 spread throughout the world, consumers faced major changes in their daily activities, including the closure of many businesses that did not know how to adapt, while those that did experience supply chain disruptions were influenced by product availability (Ha et al, 2021). In this context, people spent much more time in their homes, so they had to adopt different technologies to make purchases, and they were much more aware of the importance of saving water and energy, which has generated greater awareness of waste, as well as the adoption of some pro-environmental and social practices (Arias et al, 2021).…”

“…These authors identified that small companies are especially vulnerable in times of crisis due to a lack of resources compared to large companies. Therefore, small businesses must analyze how, when, where, and to whom they sell their products to achieve long-awaited sustainability during and after the crisis (Ha et al, 2021). In this sense, small businesses could benefit from a better understanding of their consumers, such as knowing their emotions related to the pandemic (resilience, optimism, etc.)…”

Modelo conceptual del consumo de alimentos en un contexto de sustentabilidad durante la pandemia por Covid-19

“…Experiencia disfrutable (Esposti, Mortara, y Roberti, 2021;Matacena et al, 2021;Qi et al, 2020) Emociones (Alsetoohy, Ayoun, y Abou-Kamar, 2021;Ha, Childs, Sneed, y Berry, 2021;Li et al, 2021) Confianza (Cachero-Martínez, 2020;Czeczotko et al, 2021;Skalkos et al, 2021) Valores del consumidor…”

“…Las emociones fueron un factor relevante en el consumo alimentario sustentable, pues el estado de ánimo fue un factor que incidió en el consumo de alimentos con atributos sustentables (Li et al, 2021). El grado en que los consumidores experimentan emociones y la resiliencia durante la pandemia influyeron en su frecuencia de compra sustentable (Ha et al, 2021).…”