ABSTRACT
During the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers’ food procurement activities underwent considerable transformations due to restrictive policies on social distancing. These behavioral changes induced a new industrial landscape within the food retail sector, with franchise stores gaining more consumers and more intensive competition occurring across online food retail platforms. This study employs cross-sectional survey data from China, Portugal, Turkey, and the USA to examine the major changes in consumer food procurement behaviors during the pandemic worldwide, as compared to behaviors before the pandemic. Based on the findings, we provide operable implications necessary for food retailers to sustain their businesses in a post-pandemic context. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.