E-COMMERCE & COVID-19
The e-commerce market has adapted and changed significantly over the period of COVID-19. Prior to COVID-19 a few companies in the e-commerce industry were market leaders such as Amazon and now there has been an overall increase and outlook towards utilizing ecommerce as a business strategy in a COVID-19 economy. An interesting thought is how will this restructure the post-COVID world and will the main way of consumer shopping and successful retail businesses become predominantly online? Even though value and convenience have remained a top priority for consumers, McKinney group found a 30% growth in online sales as consumers are open to new shopping behaviors and continue with such behavior post COVID-19.
THE TRANSFER TO A DIGITAL MARKET
COVID-19 has fostered similar planning amongst countries for lockdown and the closing of international borders in response to outbreaks, therefore the continuous setbacks and implication of COVID-19 in the retail sectors throughout lockdown has shown a correlative growth towards ecommerce usage. For example some of “China’s online retail sales rose from 19.4% to 24.6% between August 2019 and August 2020” (How COVID-19 triggered the digital and e-commerce turning point, 2021) and in March 2020 the UK saw correlative results with online spending.
Closer to home, recently a study (2021) by Mastercard of 806 Australian businesses show that 52% of them embraced the ecommerce shift in response to the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 in Australia. Ecommerce platforms might have further subsided economic downturns for many countries with a large amount of businesses in places offering online services.
MARKETING ADAPTATION TO ACCOMMODATE
CHANGE TOWARDS A DIGITAL ECONOMY
There are many marketing aspects that impact the success of an ecommerce experience for customers. Customer knowledge is extremely important for the successful sale of a product or service online and a lack of stock of a product during times like this might easily impact brand loyalty by customers.
Personalization toward a specific target market is important during the financial period of COVID. Many might question the customer experience of a consumer trading in a digital market. Ecommerce tackles this by offering personalisation of content and offerings that are unique to consumer preferences. New technologies will enable the better marketing of products towards consumers even in a direct to consumer (D2C) channel (Arora, Dahlström, Hazan et al 2020).
SUCCESS OF E-COMMERCE PRE/POST PANDEMIC
Existing businesses such as Amazon, a key player in the ecommerce market recorded a 26% increase in sales in Q1 of 2020 due to the sudden impact of COVID-19 felt in many countries. Other businesses need to be resilient in this market as it tackles challenges of change towards innovative technology and daring adaptations now more than ever to bring customers their services during a global pandemic. The United States has a projected “e-commerce share of total retail sales estimated to reach 15.5 percent in 2022” (Hrnjic, E. 2021). Similar studies indicate that the shift in consumer behaviour towards e-commerce in places like Singapore due to COVID-19 has shown that some businesses saw higher annual growth and an additional annual income towards the digital economy (Hrnjic, E. 2021). Closer to home, in 2020 Australia Post recorded an increase up 31% of people shopping online during the month of April alone showing the impacts of lockdown on the in-person retail industry. Ecommerce is not just a trend in today’s COVID environment but might prove to be the more widely used way for retail for the future.
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Sources:
Hrnjic, E. (2021, February 9). COVID–19 crisis may provide the impetus to creative destruction as seen during the dotcom bubble burst, says Emir Hrnjic. CNA. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/e-commerce-boom-covid-19-online-shopping-sales-retail-13025254
Arora, A., Dahlström, P., Hazan, E., Khan, H., & Khanna, R. (2020, October 8). Reimagining marketing in the next normal. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/reimagining-marketing-in-the-next-normal