Disruption in the Chinese E-Commerce During COVID-19
Abstract
The recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has infected millions of citizens worldwide and claimed many lives. This paper examines its impact on the Chinese e-commerce market by analyzing behavioral changes seen from a large online shopping platform. We first conduct a time series analysis to identify product categories that faced the most extensive disruptions. The time-lagged analysis shows that behavioral patterns seen in shopping actions are highly responsive to epidemic development. Based on these findings, we present a consumer demand prediction method by encompassing the epidemic statistics and behavioral features for COVID-19 related products. Experiment results demonstrate that our predictions outperform existing baselines and further extend to the long-term and province-level forecasts. We discuss how our market analysis and prediction can help better prepare for future pandemics by gaining an extra time to launch preventive steps.
- Publication:
-
arXiv e-prints
- Pub Date:
- July 2020
- DOI:
- 10.48550/arXiv.2009.14605
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2009.14605
- Bibcode:
- 2020arXiv200914605Y
- Keywords:
-
- Physics - Physics and Society;
- Computer Science - Computers and Society;
- 68T07;
- J.4
- E-Print:
- 10 pages, 7 figures, 6 tables