Title: Impact of COVID-19 on the Indian retail industry: meta-trend analysis based on text mining

Authors: Pooja Misra; Komal Sharma

Addresses: Birla Institute of Management Technology, Plot No. 5, Knowledge Park – II, Greater Noida – 201 306, India ' PGDM (Retail Management), 2020-22, Birla Institute of Management Technology, Plot No. 5, Knowledge Park – II, Greater Noida – 201 306, India

Abstract: COVID-19 has induced a huge economic crisis and adversely impacted the retail industry. The study critically evaluates the impact of COVID-19 on the Indian retail industry, its transition as a result of the pandemic and challenges faced by it. The study shares measures and avenues that retailers should focus on to be on par with the changes in consumer behaviour that have resulted from the pandemic. This was done through a qualitative analysis, i.e., by the text mining technique in R. The qualitative data analysis and use of analytical models like word cloud, topic modelling, latent semantic analysis (LSA) have highlighted the major impact of COVID-19 on the Indian retail sector as: changes in consumer behaviour and shopping pattern, supply-chain disruption, demand fluctuation, digital transformation of the sector and liquidity crunch faced by physical store-based retailers. The study provides a direction in theoretical, empirical and applied research to retailers, researchers and policymakers.

Keywords: COVID-19; retail industry; text mining; topic modelling; latent semantic analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEM.2024.135099

International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets, 2024 Vol.16 No.1, pp.1 - 20

Accepted: 12 Apr 2023
Published online: 30 Nov 2023 *