Content area
Full Text
1. Introduction
After the COVID-19 outbreak, many businesses were forced to close and most sectors faced an unprecedented disruption of commerce (Donthu and Gustafsson, 2020; Rodrigues et al., 2021). In several countries, lockdown and social distancing measures were implemented, meaning that nonessential stores were closed to reduce contagion risk (OECD, 2020), accustoming individuals to dealing with the demands of living with containment measures (Skegg et al., 2021). In the initial phases of the emergency, distribution channel cash flows shrank in offline channels, and several order delays or cancelations were experienced (Kang et al., 2020). Despite these negative effects, in some cases, the pandemic represented an opportunity for firms to innovate their marketing strategies (Ding and Li, 2021; Wang et al., 2020), for example by enhancing collaborative business-to-business (B2B) practices and impacting the digital transformation agenda (Balis, 2020). In this scenario, companies were pushed to review business models to address situations where customers avoid physical stores and shop remotely (Kannan, 2020). Hence, COVID-19 has transformed the way in which firms and consumers interact (Kannan and Kulkarni, 2021) and also offered growth opportunities for companies.
A main industry that experienced a rapid online during COVID-19 growth is represented by the white goods one (Bain and Company, 2020). White goods refer to large home appliances, also called “major appliances,” which include refrigerators, freezers, dishwashing machines, washing machines, cookers and ovens (Statista, 2020a). Scholars such as Delre et al. (2007) consider white goods as durable goods, which need more time to take off because they are more expensive and involve higher risks. Thus, according to previous authors, social influence-driven processes begin later, by the time the penetration of these products on the market is greater and their potential is more evident (Tellis et al., 2003). Because of COVID-19 lockdowns, longer time spent by consumers at home pushed for the need to buy more white goods. For example, in 2020, in Italy, sales of major appliances increased by 24% as compared to the previous year (Statista, 2020b).
The adoption of digital marketing requires more research, as this domain is rapidly evolving because of the constant spreading of new media (Pandey et al., 2020; Shaltoni, 2017), and this also affects durable goods. However so far,...