The Moderating Effect of COVID-19 on the Promotion, Distribution and Sales of Dairy Products in Western India: An Exploratory Study

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study aims at exploring and understanding the effect of four independent variables related to dairy retail marketing and distribution (deep freezers, promotions, company support and distributor-retailer relationship) and one moderating variable Covid-19 lockdown on sales of dairy product during the Covid 19 pandemic situation. Research design and methodology: Personal interviews and door-to-door surveys and promotional tools were designed to publicise and collect data from the retailers. The sale data before, during and after promotion activity were all recorded and evaluated to draw an inferential conclusion. Factor analysis and multiple regression methods were adopted to analyses the data collected. Results: The research shows that four out of the five factors studied was found having significant impact on dairy retail sales. The highest impact on sales was contributed by promotions, secondly by the deep freezer impact followed by distributor-retailer relationship during the study period and lastly but not the least due to influence of Covid-19 lockdown. Conclusions: The study contributes to the body of knowledge in cold chain distribution process through utilization of right mix of tools and tactics for effective marketing and distribution of dairy products in developing countries especially during a pandemic situation. © Copyright The Author(s) This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http//Creat¡vecommons.org/l¡censes/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.