Panic Station

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in consumer behavior, where social commerce played a relevant role. Through the theory of protection motivation as a theoretical basis, this chapter´s purpose is the analysis of consumer sentiment in the evolution of panic buying for which the authors identified the trend themes and some important influencers during the contingency. The results show that the leaders with the highest positive sentiment levels were the President of Taiwan and the Prime Minister of Australia. WHO was the influential account with the most negative sentiment during the pandemic. Relative to trending topics, the dataset with the highest positive sentiment is related to cleaning and disinfection products. The face mask data set had the highest negative sentiment and is the trending topic with the highest polarity. The trending topic on health foods, vitamins, and food supplements had the lowest polarity.