Abstract:

At the beginning of 2020, with the spread of the pandemic known as COVID-19, the daily life and business world had to go through a radical change. In this context, many people have changed their daily purchasing tools to meet the applicable restrictions, and local have arranged their operations to adapt to the negative effects of the rapid spread of the disease. The retail industry has heard the need to adjust to consumers’ stockiness and panic purchasing behavior. This study examined the impact of purchasing attitudes for various product groups during the COVID-19 pandemic period and the differences between sales on the online and physical markets. As the first step, a mass analysis was made to determine which product groups were affected by similar shopping behaviors during the pandemic. In the second phase, for each group, the impact of the COVID-19 case number on sales levels was studied using the Stepwise, Lasso and Best Subset regression forecast models, and all models were applied to both physical and online market data sets. The results showed that during the pandemic there was a significant transition from physical markets to online markets. The findings are expected to be an important guide for retail sector managers to adapt to the new world.

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