Impact of COVID-19 on digital platforms and change in E-commerce shopping trends

Abstract

Digital platforms are considered to be the tools for performing a huge number of tasks. It mainly enables a data-driven world rather than process-driven. Digital platforms are used in huge sectors mainly in market places, media platforms, knowledge platforms, etc. Over the years, digital platforms have been observing a massive increase as people tend to buy online and also use other services which can be subscription-based or free of cost on various online channels. Electronic commerce platforms are facing a lot of challenges due to COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. COVID-19 has impacted customer shopping trends on many digital platforms. The pandemic has affected customer behavior, the amount of sales, and the overall supply chain drastically. People tend to feel treacherous while buying online which has led to major variation in the number of orders of various categories of goods like grocery, healthcare, luxury, fashion etc. In India particularly, four lockdown phases have been observed as of now with varying trends in customer behavior while buying online. In this paper, a systematic analysis has been conducted on various categories of goods and chattels sold on numerous digital platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic in the lockdown phases. The analysis mainly focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses observing at the change in customer buying trends and secondly, a careful analysis has been conducted on the customer feedback based on many parameters like the usage, performance, security, usefulness, satisfaction factors etc. of the digital platforms in the lockdown phases. The paper is concluded with a comparative analysis of all four phases of lockdown as observed in India with the most common items ordered category-wise.