The world of changes: COVID-19’s impact on the retail path towards sustainability

Management literature states that a type of external shock, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, accelerates innovation processes at organisational and societal levels. Furthermore, recent studies stress that this exogenous shock spurred new policies and forced heterogeneous actors of diverse business sectors to reflect on sustainability practices. In this study, the authors concentrate on a specific business industry, such as retail, and overview the main changes during the mentioned pandemic. An appropriate starting point to understand these changes has been to conduct an analysis of the literature, searching for links between the concepts of retail, COVID-19 and sustainability. This research thus provides a snapshot of the latest academic advancements that address issues like the policy framework to recover from COVID-19, retailers’ approach to overcoming this crisis and their approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Finally, this chapter lists potential research directions that scholars may consider for a deeper analysis of COVID-19’s impact on retail sustainability practices.