Impact of Covid 19 on Consumer Behavior Towards Consumption of Healthy Food Products

Abstract The study is investigating the impact of COVID-19 on consumer behavior and the changes in life based on the social economic backgrounds. This study used as a survey questionnaire that aimed at investigating the impact of COVID-19 on consumers ability to afford health awareness and lifestyle and how this affected their buying behavior on healthy products. A total of 400 responses were analyst using a structural equation modeling while considering that the consumer social economic background was an exogenous variable while they are changing way of life and adaptation was an endogenous variable. The study revealed that covid-19 has affected the consumer behavior and has increased the demand for affordable substitutes. The findings also reveal that the demand for health and hygienic products is also increasing while the current employment status and family earning status determines the ability of the consumer to afford certain products. Introduction Covid-19 disrupted the manner in which humans interact since infecting millions of people and leaving most of them unemployed. There was a lot of loss of life occupation and even the livelihood of people is affected. The normal routine social and economic life was disrupted leading to prolonged lockdowns and cessation of movements. This affected a lot of psychological and consumer behavior. Most of the employees changed their purchasing behavior and preferred to use e-commerce (Arora & Grey, 2020). In addition, most of the consumers were under constant fear of infection and restricted their mobility and became more aware of their health and this also changed their lifestyle and their eating habits. Current studies have shown that the impact of COVID-19 is not similar across all citizens depending on the type of condition such as poverty, age, residential status and other variables that are affecting people demographically. Since the COVID-19 impact most of the consumers have changed to the economic social and psychological ways and this has also impacted the manner in which they are spending money. In most cases consumers will always react to changes in the environment and cope and adapt to the environment depending on the imposed constraints like what was observed during the pandemic (Avdiu & Nayyar, 2020). There are certain unusual behaviors that are still carried out to date due to the COVID-19. Most of the consumers were forced to cut down their spending and change their brands and products and also substituted them with others while they were becoming more sensitive about their health. Recent studies have also shown that the impact of COVID-19 is affecting consumers while more of them are now spending more on groceries health products and more hygienic products (Chopra, et al., 2021). These changes have been motivated by the changes in consumer behavior due to the pandemic. COVID-19 also induced certain behaviors which led to consumption shifts. This shift created a lot of brand and product substitution due to the impact on the consumer social economic status and the predisposing factors of the disease. Various beliefs also affected the consumers buying environment and this also affected stocks supply and demand of certain products (Baiano, Zappullo, & Conson, 2020). The social media also played a big role in influencing consumer behavior because it created the destructions and influenced both external and internal stimuli. While most of the employees lost their jobs family income reduced and this also affected consumer disposable income lowering their affordability and forcing them consequently to change them consumption. AIM The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of Covid 19 on consumer behavior towards consumption of healthy food products Objectives With the above background this study seeks to address the following objectives To study the impact of social economic power and its influence on consumers lifestyle affordability and awareness towards certain healthy brands To analyze extent to which the consumers have changed their lifestyle due to the COVID-19 influencing their buying behavior on healthy food To investigated the extent to which the social economic background has made consumers to be able to adapt and change their buying behavior due to COVID-19 on healthy food Background and Motivation The main reason for conducting this study is based on the fact that previous theories of consumer behavior have only dealt with the consumers’ needs and preferences in regard to the environmental, social, biological and cognitive behavior in nature. Previous studies that have been conducted on pandemics had focused on the Asian flu, influenza and natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina (Billore & Anisimova, 2021). None of the previous studies have been done and if are available are very few on COVID-19. Since this is a recent pandemic and its occurrence affected a lot of consumers in the world it is important to study and analyze the conservative nature on how consumers are adapting to the economic recession and slowdown in marketing that was caused by the disruptive COVID-19. It is also understood that natural disasters have always affected consumers by creating compulsive and impulsive buying behaviors. The main reason for this research was to find out how during natural disasters consumers change their behavior in terms of purchasing power and what factors created indulgence in impulsive and compulsive buying behavior. Methodology A self-reported questionnaire was designed with the specific questions on the impact of covid 19 based on the consumer behavior. Even though this research did not find a suitable questionnaire that was having a specific reference that had been hypothesized with the research model still the questionnaire was designed to fit the data collection intended for this purpose. Several items that had been used previously on disasters especially on biological pandemics were used in this questionnaire. The questionnaire was administered and sent to different participants using different linguistic and social economic backgrounds. The five category of the response included people from private sector firms, public sector organizations, government organization as well as independent business households. The questionnaire also distinguished the income levels in seven different categories. The survey was conducted to participants with the different social economic backgrounds in India. Considering the diversity of different languages spoken in India the questionnaire was in form of English, Hindi, Bengali and Malayalam. A total of 469 responses were received out of which 69 had been rejected for failing to meet the inclusion criteria. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS where descriptive statistics were analyzed determining the minimum and maximum scores, mean and standard deviation for all the items that had been provided in the questionnaire. Main Findings The descriptive statistics showed that the participants were coming from different social demographic and economic backgrounds and this affected their purchasing power. This is because all the participants deferred in terms of employment status, occupations and earning power. With the seven categories of earning power, it was possible to analyze the respondents according to the employment status earning status and the type of occupation (Chopra, et al., 2021). It was observed that the relationship between occupation and affordability was affected by the impact of COVID-19. This is because most of the participants pointed out lockdown as a factor having affected their affordability of certain consumer brands due to restrictive movement. In addition to this the results also showed that there was a relationship between the employment status and affordability which was also affected by the COVID-19. Most of the employees attributed this to slow income and lack of disposable income due to reduced movement and restrictions. In relation to income most of the employees and participants showed that they had lost their job and this meant that they lost their salaries. In other circumstances the employees also received half of their salary because of the impact of the COVID-19 and this therefore meant that their affordability levels reduced therefore impacting their consumer behavior. While analyzing the demographic status of the participants it was observed that there was an influence of occupation in relation to the changing lifestyles of the people due today pandemic. One of the objectives was to find out if there was a relationship between occupation and lifestyle changes due to their impact of the pandemic (del Rio‐Chanona, Mealy, Pichler, Lafond, & Farmer, 2020). The results of this research showed that government employees who are working on the public sector did not change their lifestyle so much by indulging in expensive lifestyle because of the impact of the covid-19. This is because most of the government employees did not receive any changes in their salary income as the government cushioned them from the effects of the covid-19 in form of subsidies and salary allowances. On the other hand, there was a negative impact on private employees worked in the private sector because most of their salaries were either reduced by half or stopped or some of the employees losing their jobs because the government was not there to cushion them from the adverse effect of COVID-19 (Eroglu, Machleit, & Neybert, 2022). This therefore indicates that life cell changes affect their earning status and consequently changes their consumer behavior with regard to certain products. Analysis of the occupation employment status revealed that the consumer behavior towards certain brands changed their purchasing behavior tilting them to more hygienic food substances such as fresh vegetables and fruits. This confirms that there is a relationship between the earning status and health awareness. The research also reveals that people were more discriminative on the type of brands they were purchasing during the pandemic due to the increased awareness of the health status (Galati, Moavero, & Crescimanno, 2019). It was also observed that there was an increase demand for healthy food products which was not associated with any decrease in affordability. This is because most of the people were willing to go out of their way to buy healthy products with a perception that they could prevent them from contacting the disease. Significantly it was also observed that people could afford the daily necessities while also desiring to substitute to them with similar products (Hensher, 2021). This shows that the lifestyle changes created a significant and positive influence on the demand for people remaining healthy while desiring wellness products which is also explaining why there was rise and demand for wellness and entertainment products as the pandemic progress. Critical Evaluation The results of this studies shows that there were a direct and indirect effects that were being created in the socioeconomic background of the consumers and therefore changing their way of life and impacting their consumer behavior. This was observed due to the changes in affordability and lifestyle changes. The current employment status also created a demand for wealth products considering that most of the people demanded for healthy products as a way of sustaining themselves throughout the pandemic (Gordon‐Wilson, 2022). The results also show that the earning status of the people led to a significant negative influence we need to came to demanding for wellness and entertainment products. Since the changes in affordability and lifestyle changes there was a difference in purchasing power of most of the people due to the changing earning ability The critical evaluation of this research paper shows that there was validity and reliability due to the study results. Since the research was also conducted on abroad range of different social economic background the results reveal the true reflection of different earning power and its influence on consumer behavior. This study also encountered certain limitations (Guthrie, Fosso‐Wamba, & Arnaud, 2021). For example, in position of lockdown was done in certain parts of India at different times and therefore it was very difficult to confirm at what particular level did they lock down affect consumer behavior. The other limitation was that India is a big country and therefore the geographical size created a limitation (Eroglu, Machleit, & Neybert, 2022). However, they may advantage of this research is that the research survey was able to reach the device groups cultures and communities. This therefore created more insights when it comes to consumer behavior in different marketing segmentation. Gaps and Future Direction Most of this should be conducted when it comes to the effect of consumer behavior due to the impact of COVID-19. India is also a very large country and therefore the population used in this research was too low to be generalized. Very little research has been done on this topic and therefore limited articles that support the findings. The structure of the survey questionnaire was altered to fit this particular research and therefore not fully standardized. It is recommended that in future among standardized questionnaire is used in order to enhance reliability and validity of the research process. Conclusion and Recommendation The analysis of the questionnaires survey on the impact of COVID-19 on consumer behavior has revealed interesting facts. The major findings shows that affordability of consumers over employed in the most organized sector were affected compared to those who are employed in an organized sector. They other interesting fact is that their current employment status together with the earning potential of the family impacted different lifestyle changes affecting consumer behavior due to health awareness. It is also concluded that there was an increased demand for wellness and entertainment products because of the growing demand for health created by the social media. In cases where they consumers were not able to afford their daily necessities affordable substitutes were preferred indicating changes in consumer behavior. The findings of this study can help when organizations to plan and come up with appropriate strategies that can help them in changing and shifting their consumption and substitution behavior as a result of pandemics. This information can also be used to buy the marketing teams and branding teams to be able to analyze and adjust to consumer behavior during pandemics. References Arora, T., & Grey, I. (2020). 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