Impact of COVID-19 on the customer end of retail supply chains: A big data analysis of consumer satisfaction

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the biggest disruptive events of recent decades and has had a global effect on society and the economy. The political regulations resulting from COVID-19 also led to significant changes in physical grocery shopping. However, the specific impact of COVID-19 on consumer satisfaction at the customer end of retail supply chains, i.e., the point-of-sale (PoS), has not yet been addressed. By gathering and analyzing consumer satisfaction data (ratings) and sentiments (evaluation comments) available on the open web, the current study evaluates the impact of COVID-19 on consumer satisfaction at the PoS. Focusing on the five biggest retail chains in Austria, the results show that there was a general and significant decline in consumer satisfaction due to the pandemic. The results also show a high impact of political regulations on consumer satisfaction. Furthermore, the text-mining based analysis of evaluation comments indicate that store layout and facilities, as well as product availability and waiting time had a great impact on consumer satisfaction. In total, over 533,000 consumer satisfaction ratings and over 153,000 textual comments have been analyzed, providing the basis for a comprehensive and sound discussion of the impact of COVID-19 on consumer satisfaction and perceptions. Future research could focus on applying the used data analysis technique and the adapted consumer sentiment dimensions in different settings, such as countries other than Austria or smaller retail chains.