The factors affecting consumer's online food shopping with the COVID-19 outbreak

The Covid-19 pandemic, which broke out in the last months of 2019 in Wuhan, China, has affected the food industry as well as the whole world and sectors. The demand for online shopping has come to the fore even more and has become the reason for preference because of quarantine practices which have been the results of the Covid-19 pandemic, curfews, most of the stores temporarily shutting down and the risk of virus's contamination. Considering this situation, physical food shops have taken action on online food shopping in order to maintain their place on the market and meet the demands thanks to technological developments and advances for online food shopping with increasing results and demands. With the help of consumers preferring online food shopping, the factors affecting the tendencies to online food shopping are formed. Considering the factors such as variety, flexibility, convenience, versatility and pleasure among the reasons for consumers to prefer online food shopping, there are various options that affect the purchasing decision. This study's aim is to determine the factors that affect the consumer's online food shopping decisions with the Covid-19 Outbreak and in other words, to identify the factors that lead to their preference of online food shopping. An online survey was made as a data collection method, and 406 respondents participated in the research. The population of the research consists of consumers over the age of 18, who are willing to answer the questionnaire and have shopped online before. The obtained data was analysed using the SPSS programme and the Cronbach Alpha coefficient was used for reliability analysis. As a result of the analysis, 3 out of 5 hypotheses are accepted and 2 of them are rejected. With the Covid-19 outbreak, the intention of repurchasing in online food shopping has effect of pleasure, comfort and flexibility but the effect of diversity and versatility on the intention of repurchasing in online food shopping are not be supported. Keywords: Online Grocery Shopping, Covid-19, Pandemic, Consumer's Behaviour