Impact of Global Trends and the Coronavirus Challenge on Consumer Behavior

Abstract

The study examines the global trends that have emerged over the last twenty years, such as digitization reflected in e-commerce, sustainable production and consumption, and the latest global challenge coronavirus pandemic to understand their impact on customers' behavior. The study employs qualitative research using content analysis, the secondary analysis of existing statistical data, and the primary research which was conducted among the younger generation in Prague, the Czech Republic in April 2020. Several hypotheses of the study were confirmed, namely: e-commerce-based sales models and sustainable production and consumption, having a sensitive influence on people's consumer purchasing behavior. The coronavirus pandemic will serve as a marker of change for how we will continue to live, produce, and consume in the future. The authors concluded that new attitudes and new behavioral customers' patterns which appeared in a short period of coronavirus quarantine (general swift to online shopping, rational finance spending, a positive trend in purchases of domestic food produced by sustainable agriculture and qualitative labels, successful adaptation to distance e-learning) would most likely change consumer behavior in a long term.