The change in e-commerce in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic

Abstract

Abstract As COVID-19 had been posing unprecedented challenges, the economic agents as well as the individuals had to adapt to a new lifestyle. The preventing measures against the spread of the virus determined an increase in e-commerce activity in general, and in mobile commerce in particular. In this regard, sellers redefined their strategies revolving around smartphone applications for online shopping, which will gradually become the global shopping standard. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the current situation of e-commerce, focusing on the main transformations since the beginning of the pandemic. The methods used in the paper consist in both qualitative research of the literature regarding e-commerce and a quantitative analysis that captures two aspects: on one hand it highlights the change determined by the pandemic in online commerce, and on the other hand it shows an X-ray of the EU states positioning in terms of e-commerce evolution. The latter consists in a comparative Hierarchical Cluster Analysis that aims to provide an image on the situation of EU states, before and after the pandemic has been installed. The Cluster Analysis was carried out in SPSS software and it is based on a series of chosen indicators from Eurostat database. This comparison provides an image of how changes among the clusters take place in terms of e-commerce indicators. It is noted that in countries where the digitization was more developed, the value of the change in online commerce was less considerable, comparing to the Eastern and Balkan states, which had a more significant increase. However, there are significant limitations based on the small number of indicators taken into consideration in this paper. Future work needs to be done in order to explore new ways to address the challenges identified in the development of e-commerce and online shopping.