Are you afraid of shopping? Consumers’ adaptive responses under crises

Abstract

Globally, people have been subjected to enormous changes as a result of several unexpected crises. Recent research has shown that external threats have an impact on the customer experience as they influence consumers’ emotions, which in turn affect their attitudes and shopping practices. For better understanding of the perceived future, this study explores customer experiences by focusing on Finnish consumers’ adaptability to disruptions caused by threats and uncertainty within the retail context. Using an electronic questionnaire, qualitative data were collected from Finnish consumers (N = 995) on their retail shopping experiences during the latest global crisis, COVID-19. The study applies a conceptual framework of consumers’ adaptive responses to ontological insecurity as affective, behavioral, or cognitive in the retail shopping context due to threat and uncertainty. As a contribution to existing research, our findings enable us to identify four distinct types of consumer ‘adaptive’ responses: the adjustable consumer type, the interaction-seeking consumer type, the suspicious consumer type, and the prohibiting consumer type. In terms of managerial implications, the findings will help retailers understand customer experiences of threats and create better customer experiences by considering the diversity of those experiences in the four consumer types identified.