E Word of Mouth and Structural Geography Predicting the Consumer Behavior in Traditional Market During Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Indonesia is a country with the largest female population in Asia, 51% of whom are housewives. The consumer behavior of housewives in Indonesia is mostly like shopping at traditional markets, unfortunately since the Covid 19 outbreak they cannot shop as often as possible to the market for reasons. safety and temporary closure of markets to reduce crowd levels in traditional markets, as a result of which traders and consumers cannot interact and transact. There are social media activists in Bandung city who try to both traders and consumers of traditional markets by utilizing chat group Apps such as Whatsapp group for promote and trade traditional market. Opinion leaders are used as positive spreaders of traditional market products, this business is free for traders, payments are made directly to merchants via bank transfers and use of delivery services by couriers who are victims of Covid 19 dismissal, sales traffic is quite high but no one has tested the impact increase in consumer behavior and product trust. Additionally, the study has also considered the role of structural geography for the prediction of the consumer behavior. This study aims to answer this problem, with 300 respondents who are consumers in the chat group taken as a sample, the questionnaire is given and processed using PLS, the results show that as many respondents feel their consumer behavior changes shopping to traditional markets and the 75.61% increases trust in traditional market products due to referral from the chat group. The results of the study revealed that the structural geography also influences the consumer behaviors.