A Study of the Impact of COVID-19 on Buying Behaviour of Consumers

Abstract
December 2019, “The Black date” written boldly in the global history, a month which shall be remembered for many generations to come. The year 2019 has seen a death count which has outnumbered even the death count of World WarII. In the early part of December 2019, the city of Wuhan, China witnessed an outbreak of a deadly disease Corona virus 2 (SARS- COV-2). The virus has spread its wings all around the globe with major deadly impact on the developed countries where the death toll has been the maximum. As of 30th June 2020, a total of 12 million cases have been diagnosed so far wherein 6.53 million have been recovered and a death count of 5, 48,000 have been reported. The perceived risk of contracting the disease has led to a massive scare in the human mind leading to various control and preventive measures being taken up. The steep rise in the level of stress is playing a toll on the mental health of the humans of all age groups in all of the impacted countries. The pandemic has made a significant psychosocial impact on the behaviour of the people towards their buying needs. The changes in the priorities have been noticed in the people’s buying choices due to the fear of the uncertainties caused by the disease. The present research studies, the degree of impact of various independent variablessuch as Change in Shopping habits, Increase in Online Shopping, Reduction in purchasing capacity as independent variable onbuying behaviour as dependent variable. i.e. buying behaviour of the respondents. The study, using primary data sources of 250 respondents which were collected by questionnaire using google forms. The non parametric statistical tool i.e. multiple regression has been used to analyse the relationship between dependent variable and independent variables. The results of the research clearly indicate that there is significant impact of fear of disease, job insecurity, and medical expenditure on the buying behaviour of the respondents.