Prof. Inoue published a new research paper “Has COVID-19 Permanently Changed Online Consumption Behavior?” (Co-authored with Prof. Todo of Waseda University)
We examined how Japanese consumer behavior changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic based on all long-term purchase data from Yahoo Shopping data. Many say “The COVID-19 pandemic has changed what consumers buy.”, but the results of this study clearly refuted those predictions. Although people made panic purchases in quantity at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, we found that after the second and third waves, people’s purchases returned to the purchasing patterns they had before the outbreak of COVID-19. We also found that there was also little qualitative change in purchasing during the two-years of the pandemic.
