A qualitative study of e-commerce growth during Corona virus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Indonesia

Abstract

Today, the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic is a global issue with severe economic consequences and society worldwide, including consumer behaviour changes and businesses. Due to the problem of COVID-19 pandemic, the businesses have transformed the way of business activities from traditional to digitalization. E-commerce is a new digitalization business model in the COVID-19 Pandemic era because every country implements large-scale social restrictions policy. In conjunction with that issue, Indonesia has been paying more attention to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on all sectors, especially business sector because of the implementation of large-scale social restrictions policy that shifts the marketing and public consumption pattern. The present study is written to provide an overview of the growth of e-commerce during Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic in the Indonesia context. This study is designed using a qualitative approach by utilizing the literature review of relevant published articles, books, and other sources that discuss e-commerce in the COVID-19 Pandemic era. Also, the writing report is present descriptively form that combine the narration with tables and figures. This study's results are the COVID-19 pandemic has changed business activities and transactions from offline to online. Also, we found that more than a million new users of e-commerce during COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, Indonesia's internet traffic is experiencing annual growth of 73 per cent in the first quarter of 2020 and rising to 139 per cent in the second quarter of 2020. In conclusion, the development of e-commerce in Indonesia is faster than the other countries around the ASEAN region and shows rapid growth during COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the pandemic's global issue, where the government implemented social restriction and distancing cause the person forced to use online transactions, including shopping activities. However, it encourages the business sector to use e-commerce, especially in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to build and advance their businesses.