CHANGES BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN PURCHASING BEHAVIOR AND ATTITUDES TOWARD PEOPLE’S GROCERY SHOPPING ― A THREE TIME COMPARISON THROUGH COVID-19 CRISIS ―

Abstract

 The spread of the COVID-19 caused many changes in various aspects of people’s daily lives. This paper mainly aims to clarify changes in ordinal people’s behaviors and attitudes of grocery shopping and in the evaluation structure of inconvenience of the shopping in Tokyo metropolitan area. We set three periods for analysis as 1) before pandemic period, 2) the period from the beginning of the pandemic when there was the greatest difficulty in grocery shopping, and 3) the very recent days. The findings about people’s behavioral changes are useful for consider countermeasures for good shopping environment against similar pandemic cases in the future.Using the data of an online questionnaire survey conducted in Tokyo, we analyzed the changes in people's purchasing behavior (e.g., store selection, transportation ways, shopping frequency, etc...) and attitudes for grocery shopping, and revealed how much they diverged from the before pandemic situation.