Being a product consumer during the COVID-19 pandemic: profile of the Polish consumer in the organic dairy market

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to determine the profile of dairy product consumers in the organic market.Design/methodology/approachThe study was based on a survey questionnaire developed by the author and administered to a total of 1,108 respondents. The statistical analysis (including descriptive statistics, the analysis of the discriminative function and the Chi2 test was performed with the use of Statistica 13.1 PL. The respondents' gender was the factor behind the differences in how they behaved.FindingsThe consumers indicated the channels they rely upon to find information on organic dairy products;in addition to trusting the opinions of their family members and experts, they also use web platforms. Further, they specified their preferred locations for buying favorite products during the pandemic: specialized organic food shops, large distribution chains and online stores.Practical implicationsThese outcomes will help in identifying target consumer segments and information channels for specific information and advertising messages. They also form an important resource for developing some potential strategies which the supply chain stakeholders could implement to promote organic consumption of dairy products.Originality/valueThis study identifies consumers' preferred dairy products;motives for purchasing organic dairy products;barriers that consumers believe exist in the market;sources of knowledge about products purchased by consumers;and consumers' preferred channels for purchasing organic dairy products. To the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first study of dairy product consumers in the organic market in Poland.

The Impact of Online Banking Services on Customer Spending Behavior

This paper is aimed on examining and testing the effect of mobile banking services on customer spending behavior and the changes caused by this influence of the COVID-19 pandemic in The Kingdom of Bahrain. In this study, the online banking services is the independent variable, where customer spending behavior is the dependent variable, COVID-19 pandemic is the moderator variable of the study. The study is focused on examining and testing the impact of the online banking services toward the consumer spending and saving behavior on making decision either to buy or save. The data will be collected in a primary form where the questionnaire survey method will be adopted to gather responses from bank consumers in the Kingdom of Bahrain and will be analyzed through the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (SPSS) tool by using the built-in functions such as regression, mediation, scale, correlation, coefficient, significant, and moderation analysis. The results of the study will show the acceptance and rejection of the hypotheses of the study. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Assessing the informational content of card transactions for nowcasting retail trade: Evidence for Latvia

We use a novel card transaction data maintained at the Central Bank of Latvia to assess their informational content for nowcasting retail trade in Latvia. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Latvia, the retail trade turnover dynamics underwent drastic changes reflecting the various virus containment measures introduced during three separate waves of the pandemic. We show that the nowcasting model augmented with card transaction data successfully captures the turbulence in retail trade turnover induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The model with card transaction data outperforms all benchmark models in the out-of-sample nowcasting exercise and yields a notable improvement in forecasting metrics. We conduct our nowcasting exercise in forecast-as-you-go manner or in real-time squared;that is, we use real-time data vintages, and we make our nowcasts in real time as soon as card transaction data become available for the target month. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Forecasting published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Changes in consumer spending behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic across product categories

We examine changes in online consumer spending during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we compare consumer spending on various product categories before the pandemic started to after. Unlike previous work, we not only look at the different consumer demographic profiles but also different product categories, providing a better understanding of spending behavior. E-commerce has been a favorite way of shopping for consumers before the pandemic, while some demographic groups were reluctant to use e-commerce. However, as pandemic-related restrictions on physical shopping were put in place, consumers found e-commerce the only way to shop for many essential products. As such, consumer online spending changed. We employ freshly released Canadian Perspectives Survey Series (CPSS) data on consumer spending by Statistics Canada. We examine the association between various demographic factors and the change in online spending empirically. Our findings indicate that, compared to their counterparts, younger consumers are more likely to have increased online spending on product categories related to internet connectivity and streaming services. Female consumers exhibit increased online spending on similar products, in addition to online learning services and home exercise equipment. Consumers living in urban areas exhibit a higher probability of increased online spending on computers, smartphone devices, internet connectivity, and food delivery services. Consumers with at least one child exhibit a similar trend. Larger households exhibit a considerable increase in the probability of increased online spending on food delivery services. Lastly, consumers with higher education exhibit a higher probability of increased online spending on products related to online learning and streaming services.

CHANGES IN HOUSEHOLD AND GENERAL GOVERNMENT CONSUMPTION AND SAVINGS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN THE EUROPEAN UNION *

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant economic shock in countries worldwide, negatively affecting every aspect of the world economy. Due to the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, governments imposed a lockdown on households to slow the spread of the pandemic. It was unknown how long the lockdown could last and how much impact it would have on households and the general government. Household consumption is a specific component of final GDP consumption and generally represents about 60% of GDP. Crises most often affect the individual and manifest in unplanned and unnecessary costs that affect household consumption and savings, and consequently growth and development. Eurostat states that the household savings rate of the European Union (EU) decreased in the third quarter of2020 but was 4.5% higher than in 2019. This paper aims to analyze the differences in household consumption expenditure and net savings across the EU from 2018 until 2021 and general government consumption expenditure and net savings. In addition, it will compare the differences in household and general government consumption and savings in 2019 and 2020. This paper uses univariate statistical methods to define the differences between the EU member states and their private and public consumption expenditure and net savings. The authors will suggest further research on the topic mentioned above and provide evidence on how households should react to future pandemic situations.

How Does Misinformation and Capricious Opinions Impact the Supply Chain - A Study on the Impacts During the Pandemic.

Misinformation or fake news has had multifaceted ramifications with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, creating widespread panic amongst people. This study investigates the impact of misinformation/ fake news (on internet platforms) on consumer buying behavior, impact of fear (created by fake news) on hoarding of essential products and consumer spending and finally impact of misinformation-induced panic buying on supply chain disruptions. It draws upon the consumer decision theory and the cognitive load theory for explaining the psychological and behavioral responses of consumers. The study follows an inductive approach towards theory building using a multi-method approach. Initially, a qualitative research method based on interviews followed by text-mining has been used followed by analysis using python for topic modelling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). The findings revealed several prominent themes like consumer shift to online buying, two contrasting spending intentions namely financial security and compensatory consumptions, irrational panic buying, uncertainty/ambiguity of government protocol and norms, social media fraudulent practices and misinformation dissemination, personalized buying experience, reduced trust on news and marketers, logistics and transportation bottlenecks, labor shortage due to migration and plant closures, and bullwhip effect in supply chains.

A CEEMDAN-Based Entropy Approach Measuring Multiscale Information Flow between Macroeconomic Conditions and Stock Returns of BRICS

We model a mixture of asymmetric and nonlinear bidirectional and unidirectional causality between four macroeconomic variables (exchange rate, GDP, global economic policy uncertainty, and relative CPI) and stock returns of BRICS economies in the frequency-domain using the information flow theory. The Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (CEEMDAN)-based Rényi effective transfer entropy approach is used to establish dynamic flow of information between macroeconomic variables and stock returns of BRICS. The original return series suggested insignificant information flow between most macroeconomic variables and stock returns. However, we reveal both asymmetric and tail dependent analyses at diverse scales between macroeconomic variables and stock returns of BRICS economies. Moreover, we find negative significant flow of information between the variables, in that knowing the history of one variable (either stock or macroeconomic variable), in this case, indicates considerably more uncertainty than knowing the history of only the other variable (either stock or macroeconomic variable). We also observe that global economic policy uncertainty has the most significant adverse causal relationship with stock returns of BRICS, especially in the long term. These results have important implications that investors and policymakers should take into account. Regulators should consider instituting sound policy actions geared towards minimising long-term effects of external shocks and uncertainties.

Consumer responses to the Covid-19 crisis: evidence from bank account transaction data.

This paper uses transaction-level bank account data from Denmark to study the dynamics of consumer spending during the Covid-19 pandemic. We document that aggregate spending initially dropped by almost 30% but recovered almost fully after the first wave. While spending plummeted in categories severely affected by supply restrictions, it increased in unaffected categories. Individual exposure to health risks and supply restrictions was associated with much larger spending cuts than exposure to income risk and unemployment. The findings suggest that the contraction was mainly caused by temporary health risks and supply restrictions, with a limited role for persistent negative spill-overs. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Understanding Customer Spending Behavior during COVID-19 Using Real-time Anonymized Data from Private Companies: An Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the global economy at an unprecedented scale since its start in early 2020. Furthermore, it is estimated that a third of the workforce in the U.S. changed to work from home (Brynjolfsson et al. 2020). As consumers are spending more time at home, data shows that panic buying changed demand for items such as hand sanitizer and toilet paper. The increase for certain categories in consumer spending during the pandemic has been accompanied by a spike in the utilization of e-commerce channels. COVID-19 accelerated consumers move to purchasing goods online versus traditional physical stores by five years (Perez 2020). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, consumers increased their e-commerce spending to $211.5 billion during the second quarter, an increase of 31.8% quarter over quarter (Palmer 2020). The sudden nature of the changes related to COVID-19 purchase behavior makes it harder for marketers to respond effectively. As research on the topic of COVID-19 is starting to appear in the literature, there is not enough work in the area of consumer purchase behavior. In this paper, we utilize three real-time datasets to understand customer dynamics from March 2020 to December 2020 during the pandemic. Combining these data sources allows us to enhance our understanding of the general purchasing behavior at city level during the pandemic. We identify product categories that were the primary drivers of a sharp increase (decrease) in spending and the extent to which this increase (decrease) was maintained over time. We also shed light on stressors such as the number of COVID-19 cases and death by city and their impact on time spent at home and retail stores. By doing so, we contribute to the literature on panic buying which is still not well understood in the literature (Barnes et al. 2020). © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The Differential Impact of Reopening States With and Without COVID-19 Face Mask Mandates on County-Level Consumer Spending.

OBJECTIVES: By the end of 2020, 38 states and the District of Columbia had issued requirements that people wear face masks when in public settings to counter SARS-CoV-2 transmission. To examine the role face mask mandates played in economic recovery, we analyzed the interactive effect of having a state face mask mandate in place on county-level consumer spending after state reopening, adjusting for county rates of new COVID-19 cases and deaths, time trends, and county-specific effects. METHODS: We collected county-specific data from state executive orders, consumer spending data from the Opportunity Insights Economic Tracker, and COVID-19 case and death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 tracker. Using an event study approach, we compared county-level changes in consumer spending before and after state-issued closure orders were lifted and assessed the interactive effect of state-issued face mask mandates. RESULTS: The lifting of state-issued closures was associated with an average increase in consumer spending across all counties studied within 1 month. However, the increase was 1.2-1.7 percentage points higher in counties with a state face mask mandate in place than in counties without a state face mask mandate. CONCLUSIONS: In addition to their public health benefits, face mask mandates may have assisted economic recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting they are a strong public health strategy for policy makers to consider now and for potential future pandemics arising from airborne viruses.

Changing US consumer payment habits during the COVID-19 crisis

Following the arrival of COVID-19, consumer spending patterns changed almost overnight, in some cases accelerating trends that had been pro¬gressing slowly for years, in particular, the transi¬tion of consumer payments from ‘traditional’ meth¬ods such as cash and cheques to electronic payment methods like cards, mobile wallets and mobile pay¬ment applications.As the world begins to transition into a post-pandemic economy, the big question is whether these new payment habits will endure. In an economy such as the USA, which produces nearly US$100tn of non-cash payments annually, changes to the way that consumption is conducted have potentially large effects on both cost and risk for financial institutions, payment networks and consumers. This paper uses data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia to identify which seg¬ments of the population are most likely to maintain these new habits, and which are more likely to shift. While it is still too early to make definitive conclu¬sions, this paper identifies trends that may provide insights into future developments in this area. © Henry Stewart Publications, 1750-1806.

COVID-19 ENFLASYON SEPETÍ

Enflasyon, bireylerin satın alma gücündeki deǧişimi yansıtmaktadır. Pandemi sürecinde talep farklılaşması ve arz kısıtlamaları genel fiyat düzeyini etkilemektedir. Gelişmiş ülkelerde Covid-19 salgınının başladıǧı ilk aylarda deflasyonist baskı ortaya çıkmıştır;ancak Türkiye gibi gelişmekte olan ülkelerde enflasyonda oynaklıklar görülmüştür. Geleneksel enflasyon hesabı, tüketicilerin harcama alışkanlıklarındaki deǧişimi, hızlıca dikkate alamamakta ve bir önceki yılın harcama aǧırlıklarını baz alarak hesaplanmaktadır. Bu nedenle TÜFE'deki deǧişimler hane halkı talebinin, çeşitli mal ve hizmetlere göre hızlıca deǧiştiǧi dönemlerde satın alma gücündeki deǧişimi yeterince açıklamamaktadır. Bu çalışmada tüketicilerin harcama grupları aylık olarak belirlenerek harcama gruplarının bütçe içerisindeki payı hesaplanmakta ve alternatif bir enflasyon hesabı yapılarak pandeminin enflasyon üzerindeki etkilerinin incelenmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Sonuçlar pandeminin ilk dönemlerinde, hesaplanan enflasyon oranlarının geleneksel yöntemle hesaplanan enflasyon oranlarına kıyasla daha yüksek olduǧunu göstermektedir;ancak pandemi tedbirlerinin azaldıǧı süreçte geleneksel tüketim kalıplarının geri dönmeye başlamasıyla iki enflasyon oranının birbirine yaklaşmıştır.Alternate :Inflation reflects the change in the purchasing power of individuals. During the pandemic process, demand differentiation and supply restrictions affect the general price level. In the first months of the Covid-19 epidemic in developed countries, deflationary pressure emerged;however, volatility in inflation has been observed in developing countries such as Turkey. The traditional inflation calculation does not take into account the change in consumers' spending habits quickly and is calculated on the basis of the previous year's expenditure weights. Therefore, changes in CPI do not adequately explain the change in purchasing power during periods when household demand changes rapidly according to various goods and services. In this study, the expenditure groups of consumers are determined on a monthly basis, the share of expenditure groups in the budget is calculated, and it is aimed to examine the effects of the pandemic on inflation by making an alternative inflation calculation. The results show that in the early stages of the pandemic, the calculated inflation rates were higher than the traditionally calculated inflation rates;however, it shows that the two inflation rates approached each other as the traditional consumption patterns started to return in the process of reducing the pandemic measures and adapting to the new normal.

Economic Crisis and Labor Consumption: Calibrating Wage for Informalized Labor Households

Economic shocks impelled by a growth retarding phenomenon hinders the overall functioning of an economy and influences the constituent unit of society, i.e., humans, with severity of its effect stretched to that extent of society which remains vulnerable to such shocks. The informal community of labor, participating in economic activity without the cover of social security often becomes a recipient of the economic and policy variations leading to unrest on their way to development. The present study explores the constraints of labor consumption as experienced by the informal labor in India due to restrictive lockdown imposed to contain the spread of covid-19 with the purpose to ascertain its determinant by explicating consumption function in the analysis and empirically using multiple regression on macro variables that influences consumption. It was observed that during lockdown the labor's consumption was dependent on the wealth accumulated in the past, whereas the regression estimation suggested that the consumption expenditure was influenced significantly by their earnings and mildly by the level of inflation in the country. In pursuit of assessing labor's desired earnings and their consequential migration, a theoretical condition is quantitatively explored. The study suggests that the government should assist the informal labor in upgrading their employable skills to help them secure a job with desired earnings in a quest to sustain present as well as future consumption needs and recommends that efforts should be made to endorse national policy empowering the labor towards wealth accumulation and social security.

Measuring the Economic Impact of COVID-19 on the UK's Leisure and Sport during the 2020 Lockdown

This research evaluates the effect of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic on sport Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and consumer expenditure in the leisure sector in the United Kingdom (UK). The leisure sector is divided into leisure at home and away from home, examining in this way the different patterns that emerged because of the national lockdown in 2020. The effect on sport GDP is examined using the Office for National Statistics (ONS) surveys and the UK Sport Satellite Account (SSA). The study found that, because of its reliance on human contact, sport GDP is likely to decline by more than twice the rate of the overall economy. Furthermore, this finding is consistent with the 2020 consumer expenditure on leisure that shows increases in spending on home leisure but also a huge decline in spending on out-of-home entertainment. The decline in GDP is extremely likely to put pressure on profit margins and hence threaten the survival of private enterprises, raising issues of sustainability under conditions of a pandemic. Increases in long-term public funding for reducing sport inequalities should be considered along with short-term relief packages for the sport sector. Additional policy suggestions are offered to address these issues.

The impact of epidemic outbreak on Chinese consumers spending behavior

When COVID-19 appeared in China, the economic situation declined to some extent. At this time, most Chinese consumers changed their usual consumption behavior and began to be thrifty to varying degrees. Consumers are more likely to make shopping plans or to shop less often. Consumer confidence, financial stress, and impulse spending can all change at this time. However, not all spending has been cut. Under a series of government measures such as quarantine or lockdown, consumers started to hoard food and household goods. Also, consumers spend more on hygiene or health care products than usual. This chapter discusses changes in consumer spending behavior in China before and after the COVID- 19 outbreak and how consumers behave during the economic recession. This article collected data by distributing questionnaires to analyze changes in consumer spending behavior. This chapter was inspired by the work of Daniel Hampson and his coresearchers on consumer typologies. We used the following independent variables (e.g., consumer confidence, perceived financial security, and consumer financial distress) to test consumers' frugal behavior. Studying the psychological and behavioral impact of COVID- 19 on consumers can help businesses create strategies during downturn times. Through this research, marketers can find ways to cope with the decline of consumer purchasing power and urge enterprises to change marketing strategies to stimulate consumer consumption. © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin 2021. All rights reserved.

Dynamics and asymmetries between consumer sentiment and consumption in pre- and during-COVID-19 time: Evidence from the US.

We study the dynamic relationships between consumer expenditures and consumer sentiment in the pre- and during the COVID-19 periods. Our results indicate that sentiment is closely related to consumption as consumers seem to maintain a long memory of the impact of sentiment during the period of the pandemic relative to the pre-pandemic period. We also found asymmetric behavior of consumption growth with and without the influence of sentiment during each sub-period. We offer some specific policy implications that are beneficial to the US economy and other countries.

Social distancing laws cause only small losses of economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Scandinavia.

This paper uses real-time transaction data from a large bank in Scandinavia to estimate the effect of social distancing laws on consumer spending in the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The analysis exploits a natural experiment to disentangle the effects of the virus and the laws aiming to contain it: Denmark and Sweden were similarly exposed to the pandemic but only Denmark imposed significant restrictions on social and economic activities. We estimate that aggregate spending dropped by around 25% (95% CI: 24 to 26%) in Sweden and, as a result of the shutdown, by 4 additional percentage points (95% CI: 3 to 5 percentage points [p.p.]) in Denmark. This suggests that most of the economic contraction is caused by the virus itself and occurs regardless of social distancing laws. The age gradient in the estimates suggests that social distancing reinforces the virus-induced drop in spending for low-health-risk individuals but attenuates it for high-risk individuals by lowering the overall prevalence of the virus in the society.