Impact of Corona virus on e-commerce business

CONTENTS
Contents...........................................................................................................................................1
ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................2
1.0 INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................3
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW..........................................................................................................4
2.1 Outbreak of Corona Virus that impacted several businesses.................................................4
2.1.1 Changes in consumer behaviour during this pandemic......................................................5
2.1.2 The positive impacts of corona virus on E-Commerce......................................................5
2.1.3 Negative impacts of corona virus have seen over E-Commerce........................................6
3.0 METHODS AND METHODOLOGY......................................................................................6
3.1 Research philosophy..............................................................................................................6
3.2 Questionnaire:........................................................................................................................8
3.3 Hypothesis and research model...........................................................................................10
4.0 CONTRIBUTION...................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................22
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Impact of Corona virus on e-commerce business
ABSTRACT
The Ecommerce is a medium that reacted positively to spread of Corona virus pandemic
as with the demand for reducing the socialisation or social contact with persons to reduce spread
of virus, Ecommerce platform come up with a big support. This allows people throughout
different location to get their daily essentials at home without being into contact with other
persons or crowd. This study put lights over investigating about the opportunities gained by
Ecommerce due to spread of corona virus. From this study it has been found that corona virus
has more positive impact over Ecommerce by making more and more people enter over online
platform to make purchases to avoid their visit to crowdy places such as supermarket and other
stores.
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1.0 INTRODUCTION
E-Commerce is a sector which provide online platform to businesses as well as customer
to maintain a direct interaction virtual to transmit product and services from one place to another.
The Ecommerce sector is one of the most demanding platforms by the customers these days due
to its all-time availability and offering of quick services (Hasanat and et. al., 2020). The spread
of Corona virus has left nothing being untouched and unchanged. As other businesses are getting
affected due to corona virus situation, e-commerce is also getting affected as customer behaviour
toward purchasing of product or demand of services also get changed with the changing
condition of society in this pandemic.
The Corona virus pandemic has affected several areas and business are one among them
as this spread of COVID 19 has led country to shut down several of the businesses, stores,
supermarket etc. These in turn brings a huge loss to the country specially the businesses who are
operating using brick and mortar existence only. But on the other side, E commerce sector is one
which is not fully get into disadvantage due to this pandemic (Bhalekar, 2020). As the increase
within the cases of Corona virus people are getting more and more concern about avoiding
socialisation in their regular practices. For this they get fonder of purchasing their daily essential
online to get the item delivered to tehri home without any risk. From this it can be said that the
outbreak of corona virus has bring a huge influence over the Ecommerce sector. To further
investigate about the impact, it brings to the businesses this report is performed which provides a
detailed information about the impact that COVID 19 bring to Ecommerce businesses, whether it
is positively impacted or brings up adverse effect over the businesses.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The current report focuses over investigating about the influences that outbreak of corona
virus brings over the Ecommerce industry. This is so because the spread of this pandemic has
affected several businesses throughout the world by ordering for the lock down of countries,
restricting the travel and tourism and also increases the demand of avoiding socialisation. These
all brings a huge shift within the demand and purchasing behaviour of customers (Koshle, Kaur
and Basista, 2020). But it brings certain positive changes within Ecommerce industry by
encouraging more online shopping habits among customers to get their daily essentials delivered
to their home without taking risk of any socialisation practices. This report discusses about those
changes that Ecommerce has experience due to outbreak of corona virus.
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RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESIS
RQ 1. How E-commerce firm gets opportunity due to spread of corona virus?
RQ 1.1 How outbreak of Corona Virus impacted several businesses?
RQ 1.2 What are changes in consumer behaviour during this pandemic?
RQ 1.3 What are the positive impacts of corona virus on E-Commerce?
RQ 1.4 What negative impacts of corona virus has seen over E-Commerce?
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW
The E-commerce industry is one of the fastest growing sectors among others due to its
additional benefits like anytime anywhere shopping, direct brand customer interaction, home
delivery, 24/7 support services etc. As the pandemic Corona Virus is spreading all over the world
it is affecting economy and business as well (Kim, 2020). But E-commerce remains at an
advantage due to online offering of services which do not require to be restricted toward
performing its operations. Due to increase in cases of COVID 19, the restriction over socialising
and enforcing greater social distancing which supported toward enhancing the sales at E-
commerce platform which doesn’t require socialisation.
2.1 Outbreak of Corona Virus that impacted several businesses
According to the view point of Singh. S., 2020, the corona virus outbreak brings up a huge to
loss of the society as well as economy through out the world. More than 40+ countries get
affected, cities get in to lockdown, travel and transportation get restricted which affected the
financial conditions of different businesses throughout the world. Other than this, global trade,
tourism, commerce, investment and supply chain within disarray. This outbreak influenced the
key macroeconomic indicators such as oil price and interest rates. The oil price gets reduced due
to reduction in demand from country like China which is consider to biggest importer of oil and
also the demand for jet fuel also get reduced due to restriction imposed over travel. This in turn
affected several businesses that are operating in travel and tourism sector. Other countries with
good economic position also seem to be in vulnerable condition such as Germany which stand
fourth among top economically stable countries (Hou, 2020). The corona virus also deteriorates
the automotive sector by showcasing the growth within this situation in year 2020 nearer to zero
by falling the sales of vehicle. Additionally, India stands fifth at economy scale and also consider
as biggest importer of electronic goods from China also get affected with the higher price from
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China for importing the electronic components due to shortage of supply chain. This affected the
electronic sector of country. These are the major issues that organisations from different part of
world are facing due to this pandemic.
2.1.1 Changes in consumer behaviour during this pandemic
As per the information presented by Bakhtiari. K., 2020, at the initial days of Corona virus
people are getting more anxious and fearful, but as the cases continue to the consumers started
accepting the situation. This pandemic results into lockdown of several countries which in turn
shut down the physical stores to reduce socialising which forced consumers to question about
their shopping habit. The individuals who remain reluctant to shop online, has now created their
account and also having a good experience with their online customer journey. Once they get
habited to perform online purchase, they found harder to set back to physical stores. Due to this
corona virus the world wide e-commerce sale has hit the $ 3.5 trillion in year 2019. On the other
side the tradition brick and mortar retailers are facing issues such as closure, loss of job and
reduction in profit (Lysenko and Мolchanova, 2020). This happens due to change in consumers
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with the situation created by pandemic. The customer is now getting more attracted toward the
adopting online channels to make their purchases which in turn reducing the growth of physical
stores and at eth same time support in enhancing the reach of E-commerce.
2.1.2 The positive impacts of corona virus on E-Commerce
Singh, H., Majumdar, A., & Malviya, N. (2020), stated that E-commerce is helping a lot in
fighting with the COVID 19 with the help of online retailers who are actually experiencing the
flood of orders from the customers about the essentials which they required due to closure of
physical stores. The COVID 19 has bring a positive impact over ecommerce sector which remain
for long term. This pandemic has given a boost to ecommerce sector due to the online grocery
retailers such as Marks & Spencer, ASDA, Tesco, Sainsbury etc. These are some of the
commonly chosen supermarket which are getting more demand from customers for delivering
grocery items to their home. Other than this the retailers such as in clothing sector also getting
benefited from this pandemic as people are getting more free time to explore the new designs or
trends and hence supported a lot in increasing the sale of the brand that are operating at
ecommerce platform.
2.1.3 Negative impacts of corona virus have seen over E-Commerce
As per the perception of Galanakis, C. M. (2020), the corona virus out break has shaken up
all the smooth running business by creating more fear and anxiety among people to get socialise
with friend, or other public areas. This in turn affected several businesses due to lock down of
several cities and countries the physical stores also get shut down. On the other side the interest
of people toward online platform for purchasing essential items are also getting very much
popular. People are getting attracted toward making purchases online in order to reduce the
socialisation for remaining free from issues (Tashanova and et. al., 2020). But despite of this
some of the ecommerce businesses are also get affected such as traveling agencies, online estate
agents etc. This is so because with the increasing cases of COVID 19 government banned the
travelling as well as moment of people from one city to another. This in turn affected the travel
agencies very badly and take them into more loss. Other than this the ready-made food delivery
organisation that are using ecommerce as a platform to hike up their reach also experiencing a
greater loss as with increasing COVID cases people are getting more aware to not use things that
can harm their health.
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