The Pandemic Consumer Response: A Stockpiling Perspective and Shopping Channel Preferences
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Author | Savvas Papagiannidis,Eleftherios Alamanos,Michael Bourlakis,Charles Dennis |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12616 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 34, 664–691 (2023)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12616
The Pandemic Consumer Response: A
Stockpiling Perspective and Shopping
Channel Preferences
Savvas Papagiannidis ,1Eleftherios Alamanos ,1Michael Bourlakis 2
and Charles Dennis 3
1Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 4SE, UK, 2Craneld
School of Management, Bedford, MK43 0AL, UK, and 3The Business School, Middlesex University, London,
NW4 4BT, UK
Corresponding author email: savvas.papagiannidis@ncl.ac.uk
Covid-19 has changed consumer behaviour, probably forever. Initial consumer stockpil-
ing led to stockouts, threat and uncertainty for consumers. To overcome shortages, con-
sumers expanded their use of channels and many consumers started buying online for the
rst time. In this paper, we aim to address important research gaps related to consumer
behaviour during the pandemic and especially stockpiling. Our paper starts by present-
ing the ndings of our pre-study, which used social media to elicit or conrm potential
constructs for our quantitative models. These constructs complemented the protection
motivations theory to explain stockpiling behaviour, forming the basis for study 1, the
stockpiling preparation stage and study2, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic disruptor
on customer service logistics and lockdown shopping channel preferences. For studies 1
and 2 we gathered data via a UK online panel-structured questionnaire survey (n =603).
Results conrm that consumer-drivenchanges to supply chains emanate largely from con-
sumer uncertainty.Lockdown restrictions led to consumers feeling socially excluded, but
enhanced consumers’ positive attitudes towardsshopping online and increased consumers’
altruism. In response, consumers stockpiled by visiting physical storesand/or ordering on-
line. Lockdown restrictionsled tofeelings of socialexclusion but, importantly,stockpiling
helped to minimize consumer anxiety and fear and even increase wellbeing.
Introduction
Covid-19 has affected the resilience of global
supply chains (Verbeke, 2020), creating many
disruptions, such as product shortages. Shortages
were to a great extent due to consumers buying
products in bulk to create stockpiles as they were
feeling insecure and threatened (Pantano et al.,
2020). Stockpiling can be a rational or emotional
consumer response relatedto product scarcity (Mi-
calizzi, Zambrotta and Bernstein, 2021), involving
large purchases thatconsumers undertake (Dahlén
and Lange, 2002). Stockpiling was only the start
of this consumer behaviour reaction due to
Covid-19. Panic buying was relatively brief, and
things started to transition to the new Covid-19
consumer status quo within a few weeks (Laato
et al., 2020). Soon afterwards, the imposition
of social distancing and lockdowns accelerated
this insecurity, threat and uncertainty for con-
sumers. Many consumers started buying products
online primarily to minimize health risks and
uncertainty about product availability. Retailers
quickly shifted priorities from developing instore
consumer experiences to building and improving
online service and delivery, although this change
is frequently associated with negative effects on
consumers’ wellbeing (Pantano et al., 2020).
© 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Academy
of Management.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is
non-commercial and no modications or adaptations are made.
The Pandemic Consumer Response 665
Consumers could have started suffering from so-
cial exclusion (Dennis et al., 2016; Papagiannidis
et al., 2017), due to social distancing and lock-
down, which led to lower wellbeing. Customers
have found it difcult or sometimes impossible to
book delivery slots and some online supermarkets
have marshalled shoppers with an online queueing
system (Pantano et al., 2020). Real queues outside
physical stores, difculties in booking deliveries
online and stockouts, as well as compliance with
health and safety guidelines in shopping outlets
led to inconvenience and the unavailability of even
basic essentials.
Prior research had little to offer when it came
to understanding consumer behaviour changes in
such extreme circumstances on a global scale.With
a few exceptions (e.g. Teasdale et al., 2012; Wen,
Gu and Kavanaugh, 2005), the impact of a pan-
demic on consumer behaviour had not been anal-
ysed in detail and, therefore, Covid-19 presented
an opportunity to ll this gap by offering re-
searchers a unique backdrop (Laato et al., 2020).
Consumer response issues presented a unique con-
sumer ‘journey’, creating a plethora of research
gaps that require urgent attention. In the rst in-
stance, researchaimed t om akesense of the emerg-
ing landscape. Then, empirical work started offer-
ing insights from different contexts. As different
countries experienced and dealt with the pandemic
in diverse ways, such pieces of work offered valu-
able ndings that helped make sense of consumer
behaviour.
This work has two overarching objectives. First,
it examines two important behaviours that were
key to consumers’ strategies with regard to tack-
ling the pandemic challenges from a shopping
perspective. Stockpiling and channel preferences
exemplify the efforts that consumers put into
maximizing their wellbeing, safety and security.
Still, at the same time there were instances when
consumers put the safety and security of others
rst. Hence, our second overarching research
objective was to infuse our study with the factors
that captured the key aspects of these conicting
priorities and study how behaviours and wellbeing
were shaped by consumers’ social inclusion and
altruism. To address the above we have under-
taken a pre-study using social media text mining
to inform our models on stockpiling and channel
preferences. In turn, we empirically tested two
models that revolved around protection motiva-
tions theory (PMT) (Rogers, 1983; Rogers and
Prentice-Dunn, 1997), an adapted version of the
theory of planned behaviour (TPB) (Ajzen, 1991)
developed by Dennis et al. (2016) and the frame-
work of pro-social behaviour (Rapert, Thyroff
and Grace, 2021). By meeting our research objec-
tives, we aimed to make a tangible contribution to
our understanding of how consumers behave in
such extreme circumstances and how practitioners
can adapt their strategies to alleviate the pressure
that such dramatic changes in consumer behaviour
could impose.
Literature review
Background: the pandemic’s impact on consumers
and their behaviour
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way con-
sumers purchase products, probably forever, as
customers have moved to a greater preference for
online shopping and home delivery (Roggeveen
and Sethuraman, 2020). Covid-19 has spread glob-
ally at an unprecedented speed and is wreaking
chaos on the world economy (Le Roux, 2022;
Sharma et al., 2020), causing global recession
(Amirova et al., 2021; Eggers, 2020; Fernandes,
2020). Relaxing restrictions may lead to a bounce-
back in consumption, which may have only a
short-term effect (Deng, Wang and Chao, 2020).
The effects of the pandemic on business will be
long-lasting and, indeed, future serious pandemics
are almost certain (Carnevale and Hatak, 2020),
emphasizing the need for greater preparedness.
In such an environment, consumer behaviour
was bound to be impacted, especially as product
shortages are known to affect consumer buy-
ing behaviour (Hamilton et al., 2019). Fear of
lockdowns, panic buying, increased peer buy-
ing, scarcity of essential items on superstore
shelves, disruption of supply chains and indi-
vidual/household demographics have played a
vital role in consumer impulse buying behaviours
(Ahmed et al., 2020; Gupta, Nair and Radhakr-
ishnan, 2021; Nam et al., 2021). National contexts
and cultures, as well as local circumstances, may
also have affected the relative importance of such
factors (Messner and Payson, 2021; Prentice et al.,
2021). These effects havebeen demonstrated in the
Covid-19 pandemic, where stores quickly sold out
of basics. Disruptions to the (old-)normal patterns
of consumer demand negatively impacted the per-
formance of the supply chains (Dulam, Furuta
© 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by JohnWiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British
Academy of Management.
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