Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet

Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Grocery hoarding in Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences for logistics
University of Borås, Faculty of Textiles, Engineering and Business. Centre for Consumer Research, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden; Centre for Wellbeing, Welfare and Happiness, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1566-4478
Department of Business Administration, School of Business Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Department of Business Administration, School of Business Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
2025 (English)In: Research in Transportation Business and Management (RTBM), ISSN 2210-5395, E-ISSN 2210-5409, Vol. 59, article id 101324Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This study aims to examine hoarding in Sweden during the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The research questions are: (1) How was hoarding related to consumer behaviour during Covid-19? and (2) How did hoarding impact supply chains? The first question is addressed through empirical, primarily descriptive data, while the second is explored through a theoretical analysis of the empirical findings to contextualise consumer hoarding more broadly. Two independent surveys were conducted to study what was hoarded (first survey), by whom (first and second survey) and why (first survey). Results show that Swedes mainly hoarded canned food, pasta and toilet paper, but also rice, frozen food and dry food. Hoarders are characterised by being young, well educated, having a higher income, living with children, and in big cities. Remarkable is that only 34 % stated that they hoarded because of concerns that goods would run out, while 55 % stated that the reason was fear of being infected or concern for infecting others. The empirical findings are used for a discursive analysis of hoarding's effect on supply chains. The analysis is assisted by introducing the CARS framework categorising product types based on how flexibly the production system can scale up production and to what extent consumption is increased or just postponed by hoarding. Industries with inflexible production systems providing groceries with a postponed consumption (e.g. canned food and pasta) were found most affected by hoarding. Hoarding aggravated the supply of groceries like coffee, wheat flour and yeast, and the supply chains also needed to adapt to supplying small packages to consumers via stores or e-commerce rather than in larger quantities to offices, restaurants and bakeries. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. Vol. 59, article id 101324
Keywords [en]
Covid-19, food, groceries, hoarding, preparedness, resilience, stockpiling
National Category
Business Administration Transport Systems and Logistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-33341DOI: 10.1016/j.rtbm.2025.101324OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hb-33341DiVA, id: diva2:1940382
Available from: 2025-02-26 Created: 2025-02-26 Last updated: 2025-04-03Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(845 kB)4 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 845 kBChecksum SHA-512
7c5625da675c6e47a4dc91f0afc5cb1f650b0940303d2dfa7f38222f45d49a79a309c4387b0520dd3cbedd15a1170787a265150001a293e728bbe2a8d1ed2521
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Other links

Publisher's full text

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Roos, John Magnus
By organisation
Faculty of Textiles, Engineering and Business
In the same journal
Research in Transportation Business and Management (RTBM)
Business AdministrationTransport Systems and Logistics

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 4 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 147 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf