The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Retail Consumer Behavior: Regression model and graphical approach

School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom

^* Corresponding author: hanqing.zhu@student.manchester.ac.uk

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers increasingly reduced their visits to offline stores due to safety concerns and the closure of most physical retail stores. As a result, the share of global online retail sales surged significantly. This study uses representative examples from seven retail companies to analyze the changes in their e-commerce sales share before and after the pandemic, utilizing regression models and graph analysis to explore future trends. The main objective is to verify whether the changes in consumer behavior during the pandemic were significant and to provide recommendations for the future development of the retail industry based on the findings. The results show that the pandemic significantly increased the share of e-commerce sales, and this shift in consumer behavior is likely to persist. Therefore, retailers should focus more on developing their online shopping platforms and enhancing the customer experience, elevating the importance of online shopping to at least the same level as offline shopping.