Online Marketplace Data to Figure COVID-19 Impact on Micro and Small Retailers in Indonesia

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak is not only talking about health crises but also social and economic crises all over the world. In Indonesia, the outbreak has shaken almost all business sectors, however it seems to bring a silver lining for e-commerce sectors since the pandemic has developed online shopping habits. During the pandemic, the impact of COVID-19 on the Indonesian economy needs to be updated from time to time to be used on quick policymaking. Therefore, big data plays an important role to provide the information relatively fast. This paper aims to describe how big data i.e., marketplace data, could be used to figure the impact of COVID-19 outbreak on micro and small retailers in Indonesia. The dataset was collected regularly from a marketplace website in Indonesia from January to June 2020. To see the changing of sales during the COVID-19 period, the sales before and after social distancing policy implementation are compared. The result showed that the online marketplace in Indonesia is dominated by micro retailers based on the number of products sold in the marketplace. The total revenue of micro retailers gives a significant increase during the pandemic. Whereas for medium retailers, the increase in total revenue is seen to be lower than micro retailers’ total revenue. It indicates a positive sign for the growth of micro retailers in the online marketplace.