Impact of COVID-19 on people-processing vs. information-processing services: case of food service and banking industries

Although COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis, it has and will continue to have serious repercussions on business activities and the global economy, as well as a strong societal impact. This chapter focuses on comparing and contrasting the banking services sector and the food service industry in Turkey in relation to how these industries were impacted by and responded to the crisis caused by COVID-19 pandemic. Banking services are information-processing services and the food service business for the most part is people-processing. The distinction is that informationprocessing services can be provided both face-to-face in a high-contact fashion, and online/through the phone in an untact fashion. People-processing services, however, are mostly high-contact services where the person receiving the service must be present when the service is provided (Lovelock in Journal of Marketing 47: 9–20, 1983). Naturally, this distinction creates a difference in the response of these two different types of services to the COVID-19 crisis. This chapter analyzes the economic and social developments during the COVID-19 outbreak in Turkey along with current and expected future action steps by the government and NGOs. Findings suggest that innovative products, market-linking capabilities and investment in digitalization and trust building activities are effective in dealing with the new normal.