E-Commerce and Covid-19

Abstract

This paper investigates the changes in e-commerce transactions in Germany, Switzerland and Austria in the years from 2019 to 2022, during the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to temporary closures of brick-and-mortar stores, the fear of consumers to be infected with the Corona virus and shortages of goods in supermarkets, online retail in general has experienced a strong growth, even though some industries were suffering from severe declines in sales. We show the changes in transaction volumes in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and detail some of the developments. Based on categorized 3-D Secure transaction data, the results are presented on a country and industry level. The results of the transaction analysis show that during the pandemic, more food and groceries were purchased online, and also food delivery services were used more often. By contrast, the sectors of tourism and culture and events suffered immense losses. However, many categories were able to (over)compensate their losses in the following years. Differences across countries include, that for tourism in Germany it took longer to catch up than in the other two countries, and that in Austria food delivery services and groceries grew a lot more than in the other two countries. The total amount of sales over all categories remained stable from 2019 to 2020 but increased later. In order to include the consumers’ points of view and to derive further insights, a supplementing quantitative research in the form of a survey study was conducted.