Research Paper
Computer Science
E-ISSN No : 2454-9916 | Volume : 8 | Issue : 8 | Aug 2022
PERCEPTION OF CONSUMERS TOWARDS ONLINE BUYING DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC ERA Prof. Dr. Jignesh P. Shah Associate Professor, Computer Science, NC Bodiwala and Principal MC Desai Commerce College, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. ABSTRACT Because the Corona Virus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19), which affected our life in every area, will be remembered in history, 2020 will be recalled. Before COVID-19, the economy would never be the same. Starting on March 23, our nation was put on total lockdown. For the majority of services and factories, the lockdown began on March 23. The difficulty and danger of offline buying have increased. Customers will be encouraged to shop online in order to benefit from internet technologies. There is a need to comprehend how this epidemic has affected customers' online purchasing behaviour. There is a need to comprehend how this epidemic has affected customers' online purchasing behaviour. Analyzing the effect of COVID-19 on the sales of a few Indian FMCG firms is the second goal of this essay. The study's target population of 1000 Gujarat-based consumers was chosen, and the companies HUL and Dabur Limited were chosen to analyse secondary data. Based on the data analysis, it has been determined that there is no relationship between consumers' perceptions of online shopping during the Covid-19 pandemic and their demographic profiles. Additionally, there is no discernible difference between the sales of the companies before and after the Covid-19 pandemic, indicating that the pandemic's effects on the sales of the chosen companies are also unimportant. KEYWORDS: Consumers, Buying Behaviour, Online Shopping, Covid-19. INTRODUCTION: Massive losses have been incurred and are still being incurred by the global economy in general and international trade in particular as a result of the coronavirus epidemic. Many variables serve to exacerbate the uncertainty in which corporations and end users found themselves. These include, to name a few, a fall in income, limits on international travel, changed consumer demand, and shifting market actor behaviour. Consumers are being advised to spend more on online marketplaces due to the global lockdown, social isolation, and other measures put in place to stop the COVID-19 epidemic. Because of this, the corporate environment underwent quick changes throughout the quarantine. In the end, the Corona Crisis sped up the growth of digital trade. Globally, a new, more discerning, financially struggling customer who is engrossed with digital technology has evolved. Losses in revenue, constrained transportation options, and pandemic mitigation strategies that reduced supplier activity have compelled B2B manufacturers and sellers to lower production and marketing costs, recruit new suppliers both domestically and overseas, and hastened decision-making. National businesses had the chance to broaden their product lines in order to replace imported goods and offer other businesses and international enterprises with the resources they need. B2C sectors, on the other hand, saw a reduction in consumer spending power and international mobility. In addition, customers continued to favour cheap goods and services while shifting their priorities toward health and safety. Products that enhance a sense of cosiness and comfort in a living area attracted more attention than usual. Overall, consumers delayed some of their demands due to the unpredictability and ambiguity of the situation. Both the industrial and consumer markets needed to speed up digitization and make it simple to browse and buy products online. Online sales increased dramatically as a result of the pandemic. Customers turned to online shopping as physical store visits were limited and many were strapped for cash; this led to an increase in online sales. Even before the outbreak, customers were generally cautious. As a result, several buying categories, like experiences, were steadily lowered in importance on their priority lists, and COVID-19 sped up this process. Many people's goals and way of life have altered as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, which has also influenced how they behave when making purchases. The goal of the current study is to evaluate these changes. In order to accomplish this, the study assessed how the pandemic affected e-commerce across businesses in order to discover the priorities of online shoppers. As the pandemic progressed, it also determined the key elements impacting online shoppers' purchasing decisions via a multi-stage survey. The direction of their alterations against the backdrop of the pandemic was analysed based on the presence of correlations between the studied elements and the complex indicator of activation of online consumer activity.
commerce portals, and other online platforms for the exchange of products and services has aided in this rise. When people see an online good they are interested in, they go offline and buy it, which is known as e-commerce. The opposite also occurs. Online shopping and product purchases have been significantly impacted by e-commerce platforms, among other processes. Global manufacturing and consumer communication have undergone radical change as a result of the development and widespread adoption of e-commerce technology and websites. The phrase "Amazon ecommerce business" describes a retail website that allows for simple and efficient online sales as well as offline distribution of goods and services. Over the years, both the number of people using e-commerce websites and the money those companies generate have increased steadily. 380 billion dollars will be Amazon's revenue in 2020, according to a Forbes 2020 estimate, up from 280.5 billion dollars in 2019. (Kohan, 2020). One trillion dollars are predicted to be the turnover by 2025. According to the World Health Organization, there have been an estimated 5 million cases of COVID-19 since May 2020, and the virus has increased and spread globally (Sullivan, 2020). Nearly 106 million occurrences were reported as of February 2021, and there were more than 2.32 million fatalities (NetIndian, 2021). Since the COVID-19 disaster, many preventative programmes have been put into place in other nations. Some techniques employed to prevent physical contact between individuals include wearing masks, maintaining social distance, and self-isolation. To guarantee that the COVID-19 dissemination was kept to a minimum, several measures were taken. Online shopping and the use of the internet for ecommerce for the purchase of goods and services have grown in popularity to avoid direct human contact. Consumer usage and transaction habits have expanded with the switch from traditional cash to digital services. India has 100 million Amazon users, according to a study in the Economic Times (J, 2017). There have been new programmes, websites, and other services developed as a result of India's increasing adoption of online shopping and digital payment methods. The factors influencing customers' ongoing use of e-commerce platforms following the COVID-19 pandemics must be understood by all parties. Social media, product content, refund and exchange policies, product descriptions, vendor statistics, delivery dates, shipping prices, web series or movies, product price, and conventional promotion are all factors that influence the acceptability and use of e-commerce. Only a small number of studies have looked at the subject during the COVID 19 pandemic in India, despite the fact that many have been conducted to evaluate online consumer purchasing intent to utilise e-commerce. Because of this, the study intends to close any gaps by determining the factors that affect consumers' decisions to use online purchasing during the COVID pandemic.
E-COMMERCE AND COVID-19: The internet has been widely used across many different industries, countries, and business sectors, especially in the e-commerce sector for the sale and purchase of goods and services. The expansion of m-commerce applications, eCopyright© 2022, IERJ. This open-access article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License which permits Share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and Adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) under the Attribution-NonCommercial terms.
International Education & Research Journal [IERJ]
72