Grocery Shopping Preferences during the COVID 19 Pandemic
Considering the temporary closure of many food away from home establishments, consumer expenditure on groceries during the COVID 19 pandemic has increased. While grocery shopping is an essential activity, not much is known about the dynamic relationship of the COVID 19 pandemic to the behavior of grocery shoppers. With an objective to inform variability in the behavior of grocery shoppers under various scenarios of the COVID 19 pandemic, we conducted an online framed choice experiment to elicit preferences for purchasing methods, time windows, minimum order requirements, and fees. The manipulating factor relates to the trend in the COVID 19 pandemic, where we consider three scenarios: an increasing, decreasing, or constant number of new cases in the past two week period. Using 32,400 choice decisions from a representative sample of 900 grocery shoppers in the United States, we conclude that the trend in the COVID 19 pandemic causes significant differences in grocery shopping preferences. In situations where COVID 19 is spreading at an increasing rate, consumers are generally less willing to shop inside the grocery store. When COVID 19 is spreading at a decreasing rate, the relative importance of the purchasing method attribute is lower in its entirety. We use our findings to inform recommendations for practitioners and policymakers.