Volume 14, Number 3

Covid-19 Sparked the E-Commerce Revolution; Some Benefited, While Others Left in Cold

  Authors

Bilal Ahmed Wani and Noor Azizah BT. MohamadAli, International Islamic University of Malaysia, Malaysia

  Abstract

The world economy, and particularly international commerce, has incurred huge losses because of the coronavirus epidemic. Due to the worldwide lockdown, social isolation, and other precautions taken to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers have boosted their purchases on digital services. Therefore, the corporate environment underwent dramatic changes throughout the quarantine period. The COVID-19 crisis sped up the expansion of the digital commerce industry. The digital commerce industries have exploded in growth during the COVID-19 disaster. Businesses and consumers progressively "went online" as lockdowns became routine. It is anticipated that the growth rate of global ecommerce will be 12.2 percent in the year 2022, which will bring the total sales of global e-commerce to $5.542 trillion. Despite this, the pace of increase is slower than it was this time last year. By 2021, growth rates for worldwide e-commerce will have reached 16.3 percent. This is a slowdown compared to the growth rate of 26.4 percent that was seen in 2020, which was also the biggest year-over-year rise those experts anticipate between 2020 and 2025 and may be related to the coronavirus pandemic that occurred in recent years. Consumers in developing economies are the most likely to purchase online. Consumers and companies in many of the world's least developed nations have been unable to take advantage of pandemic-induced e-commerce prospects owing to continuing restrictions. These include high-cost internet services, an overdependence on cash, a lack of customer trust, and a populace with little digital skills. The danger is that the existing massive digital disparities between and within nations would deteriorate further in the aftermath of the epidemic.

  Keywords

e-commerce, Pandemic, Digital Divide, Covid-19.