The impact of health and safety precautions on trust and commitment of parent and non-parent shoppers during the COVID-19 pandemic : evidences from co-operative societies in Kuwait

الملخص EN

Objectives: A research framework for the effect of customer evaluations of COVID - 19 precautions on customer commit¬ment for co-operative society (CO-OP) shoppers in Kuwait is developed and investigated considering customer trust as a mediator and parenthood as a moderator.

Method: A snowballing sampling procedure was used to distribute the research questionnaire using an online-survey platform.

The proposed research model was validated via two-stage structural equation modeling in AMOS statistical software.

Path analysis was performed to test the mediating effect of customer trust and invariance test was used to test for the moderation effect of parenthood.

A sample of 1,105 CO-OPS shoppers in Kuwait was recruited.

Results: The research findings confirmed a significant direct effect of customer evaluations of CO-OPS precautions against COVID-19 on customer commitment and a significant indirect effect through customer trust as a mediator.

Most interestingly, the invariance test for the direct path was significant for parenthood as a moderator, which indicated that the effect was stronger for parents compared to non-parents.

Conclusion: To keep shoppers committed, CO-OPSs must reinforce customer trust, especially for parents, by ensuring healthy and safe environment in their stores during the pandemic, and complying with the COVID-19 precautions recommended by the World Health Organization [WHO].