Understanding Societal Influences on the Customer Journey: COVID-19 Pandemic Impact

Abstract

For years, the consumer behavior process, known as the Customer Journey, has been studied from an individual point of view. However, nowadays, it is crucial to research how society influences it and how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed these patterns. By creating a split-ballot experiment and in-depth interviews with professionals, this research analyzes descriptively the changes faced by the different safety measures, such as lockdowns and socially distancing activities government enforced on five product categories: retail, electronics, wellness & health goods, food, and entertainment. The findings of this project evidence that the changes in behavior in the purchasing stages of customer-packaged and intermediate goods have sightly remained the same as when the pandemic started. However, the changes in the enjoyment stage are returning to pre-pandemic levels

The European Union has funded this study—Next Generation EU, the Spanish Ministry of Universities, and the University of Girona, through the María Zambrano postdoctoral fellowship to Daissy Moya Sánchez. This research was funded by the Multidisciplinary Tourism Research Laboratory (GRHCS058) of the University of Girona. Reference Number: AGAUR 2021 SGR 00575