I am Free to Be in a Grocery Store: Profiling Consumers' Spending during Covid 19 Pandemic via Big Data Market Basket Analysis

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic has forced indi- viduals to modify their routine and lifestyle, pushing them into a different social, economic, cultural, political, and consumption reality. Restrictive actions prevent- ing contagions, such as general lockdown and curfew, inevitably changed con- sumption models and behaviors. Against this backdrop, the current study aimed to investigate the Coronavirus pandemic’s impact on consumption patterns by adopting Big Data Analysis (BDA) techniques, such as text mining, regression, and correlation analysis. Specifically, was analyzed a dataset comprising of 4.5 million transactional and textual data obtained from a supermarket chain, includ- ing large retailers and proximity stores, based in Salerno, Italy. Results pointed out relevant information for marketing practitioners concerning brand choice and family expenditures.