Changing Trends of Shopping Habits and Tourism During the Second Wave of COVID-19 – International Comparison

Abstract

Over the last year, many things have changed in every field as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the rapid spread of the coronavirus, the heads of states and governments had to respond to the virus forthwith. As government restrictions have been introduced, people started to reconsider their decisions in terms of consumption and saving. The closures affected many areas that changed people's daily lives. As a result, new trends have appeared, for instance, in the tourism field and people's shopping habits. The data were collected among Slovak and Hungarian citizens through surveys as a quantitative method. Nonparametric Pearson's chi-square test, Spearman's rho correlation test, and Mann-Whitney U tests were performed to analyze six formulated hypotheses. For the latter, it was necessary to carry out normality tests. The main purpose of this article is to give an international comparison in questions whether people will prefer domestic tourism over foreign one if people prefer domestic traders' products or foreign traders' products, whether the respondents buy online more frequently due to the pandemic, if they spend less on leisure travel and whether they think that the interest in e-commerce continues to grow. As a result of the research, it can be declared that both Slovak and Hungarian people traders prefer buying domestic traders' products instead of foreign traders' ones, while the Hungarian respondents shop online more frequently. The results pointed out that Slovak respondents will prefer domestic tourism over foreign tourism.