Management Assignment: Impact Of Covid-19 On Consumer's Purchasing Behaviour
Question
Task: You are required to select an article related to marketing management and prepare a management assignment presenting an article critique. Your critique must address the following questions:
1. What is the research question? Why is this research question important?
2. What are the authors’ conceptual model of the phenomenon? Describe the conceptual model in writing, and also provide a sketch of the key conceptual relationships.
3. Consider the author’s empirical model of the phenomenon. What are the key empirical indicators of the concepts? Sketch the observed relationship between the key empirical indicators.
4. How good is the match between the conceptual model and the empirical model? Does the empirical evidence give you more or less confidence in the conceptual model, or is it indeterminate?
5. How did the author arrive at his or her evidence? What are the key advantages of the chosen research design? What are the key disadvantages?
6. . Suggest a (feasible) way to address the shortcomings you see in this research, either using the available data or by collecting additional evidence.
7. Any other comments on the methodology in the article you have chosen?
Answer
1. Research question
The global outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic possessed multiple impacts on the national economy. Considering the global business portfolio scenario within this management assignment, the impacts of a pandemic are associated with the rising unemployment rate, the decline in customer volume, and disruption in supply chain networks that lead to the global recession.
In this context, this academic paper has tried to evaluate the impacts of coronavirus on the consumer's purchasing behaviour (Habel et al., 2020). Thus, the study is based on this particular research question.
RQ: How global pandemic changes the causes of purchasing behaviours?
The global recession associated with the covid pandemic has drastically brought changes in industrial purchasing behaviours. Thus, these research questions can explore potential insights for managerial practices, industrial perspectives. The findings can assist the uncertain B2B sector in incorporating strategic business decisions to attract the consumer. Furthermore, this in-depth research about purchasing behaviours have generated potential insights for sales opportunities.
2. Conceptual model of the phenomenon
In order to derive the conceptual framework, the researcher has chosen positive decision theory. Furthermore, the entire research is based on four key hypotheses in order to explore the impacts of covid on the purchasing probability. As per Habel et al. (2020), the conceptual model of the research highlighted the four key aspects that can generate potential insights. These are customer purchasing behaviour, the price offered by the industrialist, the prevalence of the pandemic, and the cultural dimension of the society. It has been identified through the study that both price offering and service of the pandemic are interrelated with each other and can bring a drastic change in purchasing behaviour. Apart from that, cultural dimensions such as Uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation also decide purchasing probability. Thus, by deriving on the hypothesis, this paper has evaluated those countries which receive low core in uncertainty avoidance and pose strong long-term orientation (China, Singapore) have not seen any abrupt change in purchasing probability due to pandemic. However, the conceptual model is associated with theatrical assumptions which need further analysis.
Figure 1: Conceptual model
(Source: Self-created)
3. Empirical model of the phenomenon
In order to explore the phenomenon, the study has also explored the empiricalparameters to drive detailed conclusions. Thus, the author has chosen the binary responses model to identify the supplier's sales opportunity of the machine tools manufacturing company. The study has also chosen the logistic regression framework to compare the data available across 57 countries (Habel et al., 2020). The key empirical indicators that have been studied include the customer's purchasing probability as the dependent variable, progression of the pandemic as the independent variable. Furthermore, some controlled indicators, such as the number of moths and cultural scores, have been studied to generate better insights about the sales opportunity. As a moderate indicator, this research has considered the price offerings of the company to derive the different impacts. Apart from the binary model, the empirical framework is alsoincorporating the second model that illustrates the interactive effects between the different indicators such as the relationship between progression of infection with the price offerings, the interaction between cultural values and the infections etc. the two-way interactive relationship assists in the exploration of both negative and positive impacts of the covid pandemic for the business.
Figure 2: Empirical model
(Source: Self-created)
4. Relationship between Conceptual model and Empirical model
This research paper aims to investigate the effect of coronavirus on the changing customer purchasing behaviours. Thus, the study has explored both theoretical and statistical analysis in order to derive accurate conclusions. According to Habel et al. (2020), in this context, the conceptual frameworks based on positive decision theory have been driven to theoretically study the central research topic. Furthermore, to statistically analyse the customer purchasing behaviour, the researchers have conducted an empirical analysis based on the logical regression and binary response models. Both of these frameworks matched well with each other as both of these studies is based on similar indicators as highlighted in the diagram of conceptual and empirical models. However, the conceptualisation of the customer purchasing behaviours is associated with the hypothetical analysis, which is based on theoretical assumptions only. Thus, to derive the economic impacts of covid 19, it is imperative to statically and quantitatively study the key indicators. This can be achived by only an empirical model. This model has individually studied the six cultural values and changes in consumer purchasing behaviour in different nations. Thus, the empirical evidence gives a better conclusion which is associated with lower confidence in the conceptual model.
5. Research design
In order to derive the evidence, the authors have analysed the interactive effect between the six cultural dimensions on the purchasing behaviour of the consumer. By considering the four-research hypothesis, the author individually studied the correlational aspects such as Price * infections, Price * individualism, Infections * indulgence, infection * price * power distance etc. (Habel et al., 2020).
The key advantages of the research design:
• This leads to the specification of change in purchasing behavioursacross different nations
• Both theoretical and statistical analysis leads to authentication of the findings.
• The entire research design is based on observations analysis that can provide practical results.
However, there are certain disadvantages of this research design:
• The researcher has collected the data from different sources such as Company's CRM records, EU open data portal, which is time-consuming.
• The findings are pretty lengthy and can be confusing for the common people.
6. Way to address the shortcomings
One of the key shortcomings is associated with the lack of in-depth research about the potential customer. For instance, the study is focused on a specific industry, the machine tool manufacturing sector (Habel et al., 2020). Thus, the final findings are differentiating in nature. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil have an increase in purchasing behaviours in terms of the low offering of prices. Whereas China, India have not seen any changes. However, the study of Prasad and Srivastava (2021) have shown that the covid-19 pandemic leads to behavioural change in the customer. For instance, the volume of online shopping has increased abruptly. This study fails to investigate these aspects.
7. Comments on methodology
The researchers have chosen a suitable methodology in order to explore the purchasing probability. However, the empirical model is pretty complex in nature that derives a relationship between six cultural values, price offers, purchasing probability and progression of the pandemic at a time. In order to conduct a retrospective analysis, the research needs to focus on two to three indicators that can illustrate more tilde findings of the consumer purchasing behaviours for the industry.
Reference List
Habel, J., Jarotschkin, V., Schmitz, B., Eggert, A. and Plötner, O., (2020). Industrial buying during the coronavirus pandemic: A cross-cultural study. Industrial Marketing Management, 88, pp.195-205. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019850120304351
Prasad, R.K. and Srivastava, M.K., (2021). Switching behavior toward online shopping: coercion or choice during Covid-19 pandemic. Management assignmentAcademy of marketing studies journal, 25, pp.1-15. https://search.proquest.com/openview/3874aad4d31ccc54327075a97fa2e538/1pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=38744
