Historical and Theoretical Perspectives of Panic Buying: Consumer Behavior at Its Worst?

Abstract

Panic Buying (PB) is an old phenomenon but has been in the news mostly because of the pandemic but in 2021 for other reasons. While there are supply-side reasons that make it difficult for marketers to sell, the demand-side reasons cause psychological difficulties in consumers. While there have been a few attempts to smooth over these situations, it would seem that every PB situation is different. This limits the applicability of lessons learned from one instance to another in the future. The paper attempts to provide (1) a historical perspective for PB, layout the nature of PB and (2) provide an overview of the various theoretical perspectives that can utilized to potentially to understand the consumer psychology behind PB. This is followed by a brief section on the implications of PB and discussion.