Consumers’ Channel Preference for Fresh Foods and Its Determinants during COVID-19—Evidence from China

Abstract

The public has been experiencing unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic for the past two years. Government measures, such as improvements in offline markets and the encouragement of contactless e-commerce use, have been taken to abate the spread of infection. This study explored whether public channel preferences for fresh foods have changed and aimed to identify potential determinants. Data from 10,708 consumers were obtained by issuing questionnaires, and the binary logic measurement model was used for the empirical analysis to study the core factors that determine consumers’ choice of online and offline purchase channels for fresh food. The results show that, from the perspective of consumers’ personal behavior, consumers who do not pay attention to online evaluations and consumers who do not buy products based on their purchase experience have increased the frequency of online fresh food purchases during the epidemic. Food safety also significantly affects consumers’ choices of purchase channels. Consumers who believe that online fresh foods are safer prefer to purchase fresh food online. Among the factors affecting the performance of online fresh food, consumers concerned about food safety increased the frequency of online purchases, while consumers concerned about the reputation of the platform decreased the frequency of online purchases. These findings can help online and offline retailers better understand consumer needs and then determine their marketing strategies.

The influence of online information on consumers’ channel migration behavior of fresh agricultural products

“…Contactless distribution has reduced the time cost and infection risk, encouraging a shift in fresh agricultural product consumption to online channels (Xie et al, 2022;Jiang et al, 2023). Although the traditional offline retail channel is still the main sales method of fresh agricultural products in China, a trend of consumers' online channel participation and an increase of online user penetration rate are emerging due to the epidemic (Pu et al, 2022). While online consumption is becoming more mainstream, e-commerce platforms need to adapt to consumers' preferences to ensure a more sustainable development in the evolving business environment and growing market competition (Zhang et al, 2020;Shariffuddin et al, 2023).…”

Understanding Customer Opinion Change on Fresh Food E-Commerce Products and Services—Comparative Analysis before and during COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Fresh food e-commerce faces tremendous pressures to meet the evolving customer needs, which may influence customer satisfaction and finally make or break their business. Previous literature on the impact of COVID-19 on fresh food e-commerce studied the change in food prices during the pandemic situation [6], customer demand, and customer consumption frequency for online fresh food during the pandemic [4,7,8], the change in fresh food distribution and retail models owing to the COVID-19 outbreak [9,10], factors influencing the purchasing tendency of fresh food e-commerce customers [11][12][13][14][15], and factors affecting customer satisfaction during the pandemic [8,16,17].…”