THE INFLUENCE OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON CONSUMER CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOUR AND PATTERNS

Abstract

In 2019, a pandemic known as Covid-19 frightened people all over the world. Almost every element of our existence has been impacted socially during this pandemic period in addition to economically. The community must adjust to the new way of life as a result of these changes. The adjustments will reveal customer behaviour in recent times and create demand for goods to fill future needs. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the results of research on how Malaysia's Covid-19 pandemic-related restrictions have affected people consumption behaviour. Principal Components Extraction and Varimax Rotation were tested prior to the other statistical analysis. This study was then to determine how much and how differently the pandemic limitations had an impact on consumers' typical buying behaviours. Next, the study used an independent t-test, Chi Square and one-way ANOVA to analyse the problems related to respondents' demographics (gender and marital status), as well as the key variables of consumer consumption behaviour (behaviour on necessities goods, behaviour on non-necessities goods, risk, fear, choice, information, perceived economic stability, and stress). The test of differences showed that there were significant differences between the genders with regard to behaviour on non-necessities goods, risk, choice, and stress. A cross-sectional study, on the other hand, found no association between being a speedy shopper at the expensive store rather than at the normal stores and gender. For one-way ANOVA, at least one marital status category has a difference mean on nearly all of the significant variables (except necessities goods and choice). The study's findings are meant to provide businesses and entrepreneurs with some understanding of consumer behaviour and its trends both before and after the epidemic.