The Impact of Mobile e-Commerce on GDP: A Comparative Analysis between Romania and Germany and how Covid-19 Influences the e-Commerce Activity Worldwide

Abstract

During recent years, there has been an increase in the usage of mobile devices as well as a widening of the range of activities that can be performed using them. Thus, a new field of study has been developed, the mobile commerce, which represents the activity of using mobile devices (phones, tablets or any other portable devices) to buy and sell products and services through online store platforms, whether they are business to business, business to customer or customer to customer. Our study consists of two parts, the first one analyses the impact of the mobile commerce’s growth on the Gross Domestic Product for both a West European country - Germany and an East European country – Romania from 2014 to 2019. The analysis aims to understand the mobile commerce importance in the pre-COVID-19 era, in the context of stable economies. The second part studies the general consumer behavior towards classic commerce and electronic commerce in the context of COVID-19 pandemic state. In this regard we analyzed data for January-April 2020 and studied the main changes for the countries which were either early affected by the pandemic, severely affected or both.