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Social distancing and store choice in times of a pandemic

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  • Rossetti, Tomás
  • Yoon, So-Yeon
  • Daziano, Ricardo A.

Abstract

Public health officials enforced several measures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic that affected grocery stores, such as limits on store capacities and enforcement of masks and physical distancing among customers. Nevertheless, these measures can provoke queues, which could drive customers away from stores. In this study, we investigate how customers trade off between social distancing measures and increased waiting times during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our data comes from an online survey applied in New York City in May 2020. This survey included a set of discrete choice experiments framed in virtual stores, as well as a set of psychometric indicators regarding the pandemic. With this data, we estimated a latent class conditional logit model where assignment to classes is correlated with COVID-19 latent variables. We identified three latent classes with preference structures that valued social distancing to varying degrees. In spite of this heterogeneity in preferences, we found that customers were willing to wait longer to access stores with better social distancing measures. This result suggests that stores could increase, rather than decrease, their sales if they enforce public health measures at the expense of longer waiting times.

Suggested Citation

  • Rossetti, Tomás & Yoon, So-Yeon & Daziano, Ricardo A., 2022. "Social distancing and store choice in times of a pandemic," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:65:y:2022:i:c:s0969698921004264
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102860
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Kaili & Gao, Ya & Liu, Yicong & Nurul Habib, Khandker, 2023. "Exploring the choice between in-store versus online grocery shopping through an application of Semi-Compensatory Independent Availability Logit (SCIAL) model with latent variables," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    2. Thomas Wieland, 2023. "Spatial shopping behavior during the Corona pandemic: insights from a micro-econometric store choice model for consumer electronics and furniture retailing in Germany," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 291-326, April.
    3. Yao, Qi & Kuai, Ling & Wang, Cheng Lu, 2022. "How frontline employees' communication styles affect consumers' willingness to interact: The boundary condition of emotional ability similarity," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
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    5. Bushra Abbasi & Paul R. Messinger & Kishwar Habib, 2024. "Post-Pandemic Retail Design: Human Relationships with Nature and Customer Loyalty—A Case of the Grand Bazaar Tehran," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(10), pages 1-23, May.
    6. Xu, Yingzi & Ling, I-Ling, 2023. "Effects of face masks and photo tags on nonverbal communication in service encounters," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).

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