Author(s): Dewan Golam Yazdani Showrav, Md. Arif Hassan, Sayedul Anam, Anuz Kumar Chakrabarty
COVID-19 has great impact on global marketing as well as on consumers’ behavior and attitude. In Bangladesh, the effect of COVID-19 also brought some major changes in consumers’ lifestyle, purchasing and consumption pattern. People are now avoiding in-store purchase and looking for alternative channel of product sources. The purpose of the study is to explore the factors influencing the rapid growth of online shopping during COVID 19 pandemic time in Dhaka City, Bangladesh. Retail marketing of Dhaka city has been significantly narrowed due to unexpected lockdown and restriction on human movement. Therefore change in buying behavior of consumers is comprehended due to the influence of COVID 19. The factors those are encouraging consumers to go for online shopping and to ensure contactless purchase and payment are examined in this research. Specifically, the research explores how mass consumers of Dhaka city preferred online shopping over in-store purchase during this pandemic. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from September 15, 2020 to October 29, 2020. Data was collected from 154 Bangladeshi online consumers who live in Dhaka city through google form. Judgmental sampling technique was used to select the sample. Descriptive statistics analysis and principle component factor analysis were used to analyze the data. Result of this research revealed that online shopping by the mass consumers has increased significantly during the pandemic time. After conducting principal component factor analysis, it is found that three major factors labelled as Benefits of Online Shopping, Technological Supports and Convenience influenced consumers of Dhaka city to go for online shopping. Among these factors, the first factor which is Benefits of Online Shopping found the most significant factor to explain the rapid acceptance of online shopping by the consumers of Dhaka city. This study has some implications for online marketers regarding e-marketing strategies and importance of online retail marketing.