Online Food buying behavior of consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic

in Pakistan: Examining the influence of Uncertainty, Hygiene, Perceived

Severity, Lockdown, and Anxiety.

1. Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has now become a serious global crisis. The effects of this disease
have shaken the world. COVID-19 affected every individual small and large business globally. In
the early stages of the disease peoples think that this disease can only affect the human’s
health but this was not true that COVID-19 pandemic can affect every thing of the world like
Human’s Health, Industries, Travelling, Agriculture and many more. All the countries are very
badly hit by this disease and many of the countries are take very good measures to face this
disease and also not know about the end of this horrible disease. Therefore it has been an
urgent call by many of the top journals and the publishers to get research on the impacts of the
Covid-19 and bring data for those who facing the outbreak of the Covid-19. The researchers are
asked to study a lot on the impacts of this disease on the social, psychological and in the
contextual terms like the societies and populations and communities that are affected by the
outbreak of this Covid-19 disease. As this virus Covid-19 outbreak continue to spread a lot we
are getting more information about the impacts of this virus on our peoples
(WHO,2020).Previously studies shows that the fear of the unknown viral diseases can have a
very serious psychological impact on the person mental health which can increase the anxiety
and the stress level of the peoples. This is because the people’s perception about the risk which
is related to the pandemic is very high in the beginning of the pandemic (Arumugam, 2020;
Hyams et al.,2002). There is no doubt that the fear that is separated from COVID-19 outbreak
has brought a lot of psychological changes in the behavior of the consumers. It is also clear that
the peoples that are old and the peoples that have some serious medical conditions are most
likely to be infected by this disease.( WHO Report, 2020). There is no doubt that the fear that is
separated from COVID-19 outbreak has brought a lot of changes in the food buying behavior of
the consumers because majority of the peoples feels that they have such a high level of threat
of getting infected by this infectious disease. Many countries like United States, Singapore,
Germany, and Sweden have experienced the completely online food buying, which is because
of the consumers fear of not get infected by this infectious viral disease (New straits Times,
2020). The sudden outbreak of the Covid-19 results in the ceasing of the offline shopping of the
peoples in Pakistan like many other countries. According to the Sheth (2020) that when there is
a sudden outbreak of the disease which directly impacts and changes the factors like Social,
Government rules and regulations, or making the situation completely unpredictable this will
impacts a lot on the food buying behavior of the peoples of the country because of the risk that
peoples have to not being affected by the disease. As we already know that this viral disease
can influence a lot on the buying behavior of the consumers but it also impacts a lot on the
mental health of the peoples. In order to stop the extreme spread of that viral disease
government of Pakistan imposes lock down like almost every country in the world did in order
to decrease the spread of this disease which results in increase in the Anxiety level of the
individuals due to extreme level of risk of loss of jobs, Isolation that peoples are bound to stay
away from their relatives, closure of the businesses of peoples all these issues change the
consumers buying behavior. Scholars and reporters noted that the consumers online buying of
food during the Covid-19 increase in Pakistan because of the risk that people have to don’t be
get infected by this disease can adversely impacts the businesses of the peoples of Pakistan
that don’t have the access to easily bring their businesses online which will result in increase in
the anxiety level of these peoples and also impacts a lot on the mental health of the peoples
and also change their food buying behavior because of the implementation of the lockdown.
Previous researchers have considered the online food buying from different perspectives of the
peoples like because of the less effort in purchasing of food, easy access to large number of
retailers and suppliers(Shou et al., 2011; Zheng et al., 2020) and also due to natural
disasters(Thomas and Mora, 2014). Some of the studies also put a lot of attention or stress on
the need to figure out the influence of the social media on the online food buying behavior of
the peoples of the world.(Aragoncillo and Orus, 2018). The previous studies on the online food
buying behavior of the peoples usually emphasized a lot on the benefits of the online food
buying and the issues or the threats that are included in the shopping of food online in Pakistan
and also some studies analysis the influence of the different factors on the online food buying
behavior of the peoples during Covid-19. Although this study have offered valuable insight in
the impacts of covid-19 on consumers buying behavior that shifts Pakistan’s people’s behavior
of food buying from offline to online and a type of systematic research that emphasized how
the consumers psychology influence the food buying behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The extent literature shows that some studies show the influence of the Uncertainty, Perceived
Severity, Hygiene, Lockdown, on the consumer’s food buying behavior in Pakistan and they also
suggest that further empirical research is required to completely understand the impacts of
these factors on the buying behavior of the peoples of the Pakistan and also to understand the
impacts of the different factors mediate and moderate the relationship of the variables.
Furthermore the adverse effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the local businesses due to online
food buying behavior of the peoples has been documented but the impacts of the actual
psychological factors that influence the consumers buying behavior yet to be
understood(Sheth,2020). In fact, Covid-19 has disrupted the whole range of the consumers
buying behavior which will provide us a very good opportunity to research on them.
Therefore, while considering the limitations that are existing in this literature ,this study try to
investigate the influence of the psychological factors like Uncertainty, Perceived Severity,
Hygiene, Lockdown, Anxiety on the consumer’s food buying behavior in Pakistan due to the
outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our study argues that after examining the influence of the
different variables on the online food buying behavior of the Pakistani peoples, we should be
able to shed light on the factors that influence the consumer’s online food behavior so that the
different businesses in the Pakistan can take these necessary steps in mind while doing business
in the future because even after the vaccination there is a fear of chances of the outbreak of
the different variant of the COVID-19. We can also compare our finding with the study of the
others researchers so we can better evaluate the influence of these factors on the consumer’s
online food buying behavior .To conduct this research we will collect data from Pakistan, since
the country faces the change in consumer’s food buying behavior during the initial outbreak of
the Covid-19 pandemic.