Abstract:

Consumers’ purchase behaviour is presented in the literature as a very dynamic and context-dependent field. More importantly, it is still underexplored, especially in such unprecedented circumstances like the Covid-19 pandemic. Our research addresses this gap in knowledge from the perspective of the convenience stores sector. We use a unique, reliable and up-to-date dataset including the real life transactional data, drawn from 1,291 convenience stores (affiliated and unaffiliated) located in the United Kingdom (thanks to The Retail Data Partnership Ltd). We study the period of 36 months, starting from January 2018 till December 2020 (783,502 observations). Therefore we have the opportunity to concentrate on the particular categories of products and aspects of purchase behaviour in the pre-pandemic and pandemic period. Consequently we address the purchase of only one product in one transaction contextualised within the overall turnover on this product category and turnover on transactions including, among others, the items from this product category. We reveal specific aspects proving that purchase behaviour habits and patterns have drastically changed in the era of Covid-19 pandemic and clarify the research areas for further investigation. Our study supports also the claim that independent convenience stores sector belongs to those being pandemic resilient in the UK.