COVID-19 and ethnic-oriented shopping

The novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) impacted daily life for residents of the majority of countries worldwide. In this this research note, we explore how the pandemic is changing religious-oriented shopping with a focus on Muslim shopping. While supermarkets provided online shopping and home delivery services, Islamic store, as small business, could not opt for such services in Belgium and many other countries. Therefore, we designed and conducted a consumer survey with a special target of Muslim shoppers between April 27 and May 6 2020 in all Belgium regions. We found that despite stay-at-home directives that is effective since early March 2020, Muslims are still leaving their homes to buy Islamic groceries “Halal”. Most importantly, the daily pattern of shopping has significantly been changed, which helped in reducing the density of shoppers in the stores.