COVID-19 is a world changing event. What started as a small pneumonia-like symptom disease in Wuhan, Hubei Province of the People Republic of China soon had global repercussions. This pandemic has led to various lifestyle and behavioral changes as people deal with a pandemic which has taken the lives of over 6 million people and counting. Measures put in place by various governments across the world to curb transmission and rising death tolls such as social distancing, wearing of nose masks, restrictions on movements, and in some worst case scenarios total lockdowns made the situation seem almost apocalyptic. 

This paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer purchasing behavior: A comparative study on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on accelerating the shift of purchasing behavior from stores to e-commerce, particularly in grocery in Sweden versus Lebanon.

To measure this shift in purchasing behavior in the two countries, the researchers sent an online questionnaire via “Google Forms” to collect data from respondents. A quantitative analysis was conducted to analyze consumer behavior before, during and after the pandemic. 170 respondents out of the projected 200 respondents participated in this study. 

The researchers reached the conclusion that there was a rapid shift from traditional grocery store shopping to online grocery shopping during the covid-19 pandemic. However, many participants plan reverting to traditional grocery shopping at the stores after the pandemic ends, while the others opted to stay on online grocery shopping.