Data Collection for Research on Selling Practices by Online Retail during COVID 19
An overview:
Dr. Neha Bhardwaj, ex-Assistant Professor of Marketing at IIM Rohtak (now Assistant Professor at FMS Delhi), led this research study on online retails’ selling practices and their impact on consumers, with a focus on medicines and medical equipment. Due to covid restrictions, offline surveys were not possible to carry and hence the researcher approached ThinkSurvey to run this study online and collect responses from our online data collection platform.
The Context: Why Studying Ethical Perceptions towards Online Retail Matters
Covid brought so many challenges in the lives of so many people around the world. Not only it created health concerns it also imposed lockdown and many restrictions. While shops and local stores were forced to shutdown, online retail platforms came as a relief when they continued accepting orders for basic amenities.
A report by UNCTAD in 2019 noted that e-commerce’s share in global trade grew to 17% in 2020 from 14% in 2019. During the same period, several media reports indicated shortage of products, late deliveries of products, and consumer complaints regarding online retail. In other words, heightened e-commerce activity provided an opportunity for e-tailers to grow fast but probably compromising the desired ethical practices given that consumers were faced with unprecedented vulnerability owing to one of the most difficult time period in the last several decades in the form of COVID-19.
This whole scenario has also caught the eyes of researchers who have continued taking interest in topics of research on covid, lockdown and its implications on general consumers. The goal of this research was to capture insights directly from Indian social media users across age, gender, geography, and digital habits.
The researcher wanted to understand:
Are citizens frequently using ecommerce website to make online purchases of medicines and equipment
Role of covid imposed lockdown on increase in online sales vs physical stores
How resource scarcity or resource abundance affect consumers’ perception towards an ecommerce website
Whether demographics or digital literacy levels affect shopping behaviour of medicines and equipment
Challenges in Data Collection for Surveys on Online Retail
As India was going through severe lockdown imposed due to COVID-19 threat, the researchers faced the biggest roadblock while conducting this ecommerce market research. How to physically reach the desired participants, and convince them to participate in order to collect reliable, fast, and clean survey data.
During our initial conversations, the researcher mentioned some of the challenges faced by scholars working in the same field:
- Limited reach
- Homogenous responses
- Low completion rates
- Concerns over data integrity
Traditional panels were either too expensive, lacked the granular Indian targeting needed, or involved complex onboarding processes. And unexpected lockdown made the whole process more complicated.
That’s when the researcher discovered ThinkSurvey.
Why the Researcher Chose ThinkSurvey Online Data Collection Platform
ThinkSurvey stood out for three reasons:
- 100% online audience panel – Spread across 108 cities, completely online
- India-specific participant pool – Spread across tier1, tier2 & tier 3 cities
- Rapid turnaround – High-quality responses delivered in under 20 days
Unlike generic survey platforms, ThinkSurvey’s online survey panel enabled researchers at IIM Rohtak connect directly with their target audience, as it is built for Indian academic needs. The researcher appreciated the supportive onboarding, flexible targeting, and transparency in response quality.
“ThinkSurvey is a reliable platform for data collection. It has greatly assisted me in gathering data from my target demographics, relevant for the research.” – Dr. Neha Bhardwaj
Research Design & Methodology
To commence data collection for survey on online retail, the participants were selected randomly to ensure representative sampling. An online survey-based method was used to capture the opinions.
The survey focused on several key variables like – brand love and trust towards ecommerce, consumers’ perception regarding the ethics of online retailers, and ability or inability to distinguish between e-commerce fraudulent activities and non-fraudulent activities.
The respondent profile required:
- Active social media users
- Balanced representation of genders, age groups (18–55+), and cities
- Mix of education levels to assess digital literacy impact
ThinkSurvey collaborated to ensure precise participant screening and incentivized completion without biasing results.
The Final Outcome
ThinkSurvey successfully delivered responses from 400 participants across 63 cities of India. We delivered an almost equal distribution of responses from tier 1, 2 and 3 cities.
The findings indicate that resource scarcity and distinguishing ability influence facets of CPEOR, which impacts trust towards online retail, finally impacting brand love for online retail and products. The study contributes to the literature by offering new perspectives on managing ethical perceptions of online retailers.
Link to the paper: Consumer vulnerability: its impact on ethical perceptions and brand love towards online retail from a stimulus-organism-behaviour-consequence perspective
