Consumer Behavior: A Literature Review of the Early Research on the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 has substantially altered trends and the research agenda in Consumer Behavior (CB). The main objectives of this article is analyze and classify the main contributions published the early research on CB on the COVID-19 pandemic , seeking to discover the perspective and the gaps and outline future avenues of research . With this article, we performed a systematic literature review based on articles published in Web of Science (WoS). We used a bibliometric approach based on Bibliographic Coupling of Documents complemented by a thematic analysis which allows us to provide a more holistic overview of the domain under study. Based on literature review six key thematic areas were identified in CB research of early stage of the pandemic: Environmental Factors, Social Media CB and Business Strategies , Personal and Psychological Characteristics , Purchase Process , and Panic buying . The conclusions present limitations inherent to systematic literature review articles, in particular the filters used to limit the search.