Abstract

During 2020, in the time of the COVID-19 during and after lockdown. Governments are imposing lockdown and shutdown for all activities/services inside the country to reduce the spread of the previously mentioned pandemic including international flights. Major factories and manufacturers had stopped for months during the pandemic which led to having thousands of people with no salaries. Major companies resorted to work from home procedures whenever they can to keep the business going. This research will focus on the Online buying intention that eventually leads to buying behavior of Ready-made Garments in Egypt over the internet and social media, such as Facebook and Instagram to be specific. Readymade garment industry has started booming with the spread of e-commerce, especially with the influence of social media. Paper focuses on the area of greater Cairo and its resident customer segment of readymade garments, focusing on middle and upper social with minimum college education, who are also well-enabled with the needed resources to purchase products via the Internet.

The primary data was collected through Customer Interviews that were conducted through online questionnaires that resulted in the observation of COVID-19 as a catalyst for online shopping intention as a determinant of behavior since 32.5 % of the respondents increased their buying frequency during the lockdown. The secondary data was collected through the review of previous researches, models and cases. Although the Online Buying Behavior is relatively a new phenomenon, the Buying behavior is quite rich with theories, a theoretical framework was proposed for the study of the online buying intention as a determinant of behavior that is based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by Davis (1989) and 2 variables from Nayyar & Gupta (2011) along with 2 moderating variables which are eWOM & Psychological Factors and a mediating variable which is COVID-19.

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