As fears over the coronavirus grow, people are frantically buying up supplies and leaving store shelves empty. Prices are also sky-rocketing online as demand grows, such as two large bottles of Purell hand sanitizer on sale for nearly $300 on Amazon. The same size normally sells for about $9 a bottle. An Amazon spokesperson says the company does not allow price gouging and it has “recently blocked or removed tens of thousands of offers.” The teaching note discusses how consumer emotions and motivations are driving hording behaviors as well as efforts by Amazon and policy makers to discourage price-gouging by retailers.

Discussion Questions and Answers:

1. Disasters such as epidemics or natural disasters put particular strains on the world economy, causing volatility in financial markets as well as sudden scarcity of the needed products and services that experience heightened demand due to crisis conditions. Thinking about this from a consumer behavior perspective, how are human motivations driving this phenomena?
2. How are emotions contributing to unusual buying behaviors, such as hoarding, during this coronavirus outbreak?
3. During the initial phases of the Coronavirus outbreak, there was an unprecedented boom in the demand for hand sanitizers and medical face masks. Such frantic demand made it possible for bad actors to buy up the limited supplies of these goods and resell them online for many times their normal prices. What measures did online retailers such as Amazon take to combat the price-gouging linked to the Coronavirus panic?
4. In addition to the sought-after items being sold for exponentially more online, there has also been a spate of price-gouging and customer hording in brick-and-mortar stores within highly populated areas. For many items, it is very difficult to keep the shelves stocked. The onslaught of demand has led some store owners to raise prices on certain items to discourage hording, thereby enabling more customers the opportunity to purchase the items. In your view, is this approach ethical? Where do you draw the line between efforts to ensure greater customer access to goods and price gouging? Are there other approaches retailers might take to ensure that more customers have access to key goods?