IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijoemp/ijoem-03-2021-0308.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exploring panic buying behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: a developing country perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Gurmeet Singh
  • Asheefa Shaheen Aiyub
  • Tuma Greig
  • Samantha Naidu
  • Aarti Sewak
  • Shavneet Sharma

Abstract

Purpose - This paper aims to identify factors that influence customers' panic buying behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach - A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 357 participants in Fiji, and structural equation modeling to analyze the collected data. Findings - Results indicate that expected personal outcomes is positively associated with customers' attitudes while expected community-related outcomes negatively impact customers' attitudes. Factors such as attitude, subjective norms, scarcity, time pressure and perceived competition were found to positively influence customers' panic buying intention. Furthermore, scarcity and time pressure were confirmed to positively influence perceived competitiveness while perceived social detection risk negatively influences customer's panic buying intention. Practical implications - The findings highlight the need for better measures to ensure that every customer has access to goods and services and is not deprived of such necessities in times of a crisis. These results will assist store managers and policymakers in introducing better management, social policies and resource utilization mechanisms to mitigate panic buying during the pandemic. Originality/value - This study's findings contribute to the literature on customer's panic buying behavior during a global pandemic. Research in this area remain scarce, inconsistent and inconclusive. Novel insights are generated as this study is the first to combine the theory of planned behavior, privacy calculus theory and protection motivation theory. Applying these theories allows new relationships to be tested to better understand customer behavior during a global pandemic. With most studies on customer behavior during crises and disasters in developed countries, this study generates new insights by exploring customer behavior in a developing country.

Suggested Citation

  • Gurmeet Singh & Asheefa Shaheen Aiyub & Tuma Greig & Samantha Naidu & Aarti Sewak & Shavneet Sharma, 2021. "Exploring panic buying behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: a developing country perspective," International Journal of Emerging Markets, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 18(7), pages 1587-1613, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijoemp:ijoem-03-2021-0308
    DOI: 10.1108/IJOEM-03-2021-0308
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJOEM-03-2021-0308/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJOEM-03-2021-0308/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/IJOEM-03-2021-0308?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ali, Maged & Gomes, Lucas Moreira & Azab, Nahed & de Moraes Souza, João Gabriel & Sorour, M. Karim & Kimura, Herbert, 2023. "Panic buying and fake news in urban vs. rural England: A case study of twitter during COVID-19," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    2. Mohammad Alamgir Hossain & Md. Maruf Hossan Chowdhury & Ilias O. Pappas & Bhimaraya Metri & Laurie Hughes & Yogesh K. Dwivedi, 2023. "Fake news on Facebook and their impact on supply chain disruption during COVID-19," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 327(2), pages 683-711, August.
    3. Ashutosh Sarkar & Debadyuti Das & Arindam Debroy, 2024. "Panic Buying, Product Substitution and Channel-Shifting Behaviour During Pandemic," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 13(1), pages 25-43, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:ijoemp:ijoem-03-2021-0308. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.