The Use of Social Media and Its Impact on Shopping Behavior of Slovak and Italian Consumers during COVID-19 Pandemic

The coronavirus crisis hit the world and affected all aspects of our lives, including consumers’ habits, preferences, and shopping behaviors. The survey, which involved 937 respondents from two countries, examined how the pandemic affected shopping behavior and consumer preferences in Italy and Slovakia. This paper aims to explore the impact of social media on consumer behavior, more specifically, it examines the influence of social media on the preference of specific e-shops during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was used to determine a statistically significant relationship between the variables and the Mann–Whitney U test and the Kruskal–Wallis H test to assess the significance of differences between respondents in terms of demographic characteristics (residence, age, and gender). The results revealed the existence of statistically significant differences in the use of social media during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of various demographic factors as well as a relatively weak relationship between the social media used and the purchase in the e-shop promoted on the social media.