The impact of COVID-19 on buying decision-making : changes in beauty consumer behavior during lockdown
Unger, Julia Katharina (2022)
Pro gradu -tutkielma
Unger, Julia Katharina
2022
School of Business and Management, Kauppatieteet
Kaikki oikeudet pidätetään.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2022092660093
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi-fe2022092660093
Tiivistelmä
The COVID-19 crisis has brought devastating changes to the lives of billions of people. Along with the global-scale health hazard, arose a financial and economic crisis rivaling the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and the Great Depression of 1928. To protect their people, nations worldwide mandated lockdowns of unprecedented magnitudes. These would not only slow down economic growth but force companies to accelerate their digital transitions to ensure revenue streams during the mandated closure of non-essential stores and the following physical shopping reluctance of consumers.
The industries struggling most with this transition are naturally those with a strong dependency on brick & mortar stores. Among them is the beauty and cosmetics industry with a pre-COVID in-store sales rate of around 85 percent in western markets. Research suggests that cosmetics consumers did not transition to online channels as seamlessly as was expected and an apparent reason for this is the impact this forced online migration had on the consumers’ buying decision-making process. Traditionally, beauty consumers made a large number of their buying decisions ad-hoc in-store – influenced by the marketing stimuli around them. With this part of the decision-making process inaccessible during lockdown periods, this research aimed to understand how exactly decision-making and subsequent buying behavior has changed during this challenging time.
In a large-scale literature review of over 70 sources of classic theories and modern research on decision-making and impulse-buying behavior, this work has created a multi-faceted view on the topic and a comprehensive theoretical framework of the process.
In an empirical research approach, an in-depth online survey was created to understand the thus far theoretically researched phenomenon and bridge gaps in the existing literature. The findings of this research indicate a surge of routine response behavior in beauty purchases during the lockdown periods – meaning a fallback of consumers to products they had positive prior experience with. The research further proved an increase in social commerce in the beauty industry, brought on by the increased usage of social media during lockdowns and the thus increase in passive information influence. Finally, this work was able to prove that consumers of beauty products tend to generally shop more impulsively offline, compared to online – bearing enormous implications for online marketers in the industry.
This thesis contributes therefore an updated model of the buying decision-making process adapted to the restrictions of the coronavirus sanitary crisis. It provided further, several research gap-bridging findings which enabled the creation of valuable managerial recommendations, as well as foundation points for future research on the topic of the digital transition of sales channels in the cosmetics and beauty industry.
The industries struggling most with this transition are naturally those with a strong dependency on brick & mortar stores. Among them is the beauty and cosmetics industry with a pre-COVID in-store sales rate of around 85 percent in western markets. Research suggests that cosmetics consumers did not transition to online channels as seamlessly as was expected and an apparent reason for this is the impact this forced online migration had on the consumers’ buying decision-making process. Traditionally, beauty consumers made a large number of their buying decisions ad-hoc in-store – influenced by the marketing stimuli around them. With this part of the decision-making process inaccessible during lockdown periods, this research aimed to understand how exactly decision-making and subsequent buying behavior has changed during this challenging time.
In a large-scale literature review of over 70 sources of classic theories and modern research on decision-making and impulse-buying behavior, this work has created a multi-faceted view on the topic and a comprehensive theoretical framework of the process.
In an empirical research approach, an in-depth online survey was created to understand the thus far theoretically researched phenomenon and bridge gaps in the existing literature. The findings of this research indicate a surge of routine response behavior in beauty purchases during the lockdown periods – meaning a fallback of consumers to products they had positive prior experience with. The research further proved an increase in social commerce in the beauty industry, brought on by the increased usage of social media during lockdowns and the thus increase in passive information influence. Finally, this work was able to prove that consumers of beauty products tend to generally shop more impulsively offline, compared to online – bearing enormous implications for online marketers in the industry.
This thesis contributes therefore an updated model of the buying decision-making process adapted to the restrictions of the coronavirus sanitary crisis. It provided further, several research gap-bridging findings which enabled the creation of valuable managerial recommendations, as well as foundation points for future research on the topic of the digital transition of sales channels in the cosmetics and beauty industry.