Samenvatting

Online food shopping has been a business model on the rise for some time. However, significant increased growth in consumers using e-commerce to purchase food has never been so high as that recorded in 2020. During this year, the world was hit by the pandemic. Governments from countries around the world – advised or/and forced people to self-isolate and social distance as much as possible. Given such drastic measures, people had to re-think the way they acquire food. Therefore, there is a strong possibility that the success of online grocery procurement may be linked to Covid-19 restrictions. This research focused on investigating changes in consumer behaviour regarding online grocery shopping, in the city of Amsterdam alone. Further it attempted to capture the influence Coronavirus may, or may not, have had on consumers motivation to initiate online food purchasing. The findings of this research may be of interest to local Amsterdam based businesses but also to organizations operating within similar European capitals and cities. Since researches on the effect of the virus upon consumer behaviour exist in relevance to other regions or countries of the world, this research focuses on capturing such potential effect on an urban environment by answering the following main question “What is the effect on online food shopping behaviour initiated by the pandemic amongst the Amsterdam population and what are the features for food e-commerce to succeed in the future?”