Big-five personality traits and COVID-struck consumer types

COVID-19 has triggered fundamental shifts in how people live, work and consume. The crisis stimulated varied responses that reflect consumer adaptations to COVID. These varied adaptations reveal consumer types based on their reactions. Are these reactions reflecting certain personality traces? With this premise, the paper investigates the potential influence of Big-Five Personalities on the consumer types that emerged out of COVID-19-induced circumstances across the globe. The sample size for this study was one hundred and thirty-four respondents. These personality traits and consumer types were identified and then compared. The consumer preferences and their purchase baskets were then analysed. This study identified four clusters of consumers referred to as consumer types, which were: worrier, individualist, activist and rationalist. No strong associations emerged between personality traits and consumer types, except agreeableness emerging as a common trait across consumer types. There was a similarity in consumer preferences and purchase baskets for all clusters and personality types. The behavioural homogeneity of consumers during this phase of COVID across the globe reassures earlier studies that certain environmental and social situations may moderate or reduce individual differences.