March 24, 2020 
The concern of being affected by the spread of Corona virus officially known as Covid-19 has escalated tremendously in the past 6 weeks after the outbreak of the disease in China which affected about 157 countries of the world to date.
It has affected almost every sector of the economy. From large industries, factories to e-commerce, this outbreak has strained the business a lot.
Due to fear, people are hesitating to step out of their homes unless it is necessary. In some countries, the government has closed many public places including schools, colleges, and theaters, whereas in others, the government has implemented complete lockdown.
Corona’s Impact on eCommerce
Commerce business is facing strain throughout the world because of the high demand of online shopping of household products as people prefer to be at home rather than being outside in a crowded market for their daily necessities.
Increase in Online Sales of Household Items
JD.com, China’s largest online retailer has reported a quadruple increase in sales of household essentials. It has also created employment for more than 35k people in china who are involved as warehouse workers, drivers, pickers, and couriers.
In the short term, it has minimized the effect of the virus on employment. Not only in the case of China, but every country that is affected by the outbreak of the virus also has an immense strain on e-commerce business.
According to a survey online purchasing has been increasing by about 52% from the last year concerning the same time frame of the year. The number of shoppers shopping online has been increased by 8.8%.
The casual orders are declining in number and orders of toiletries, disinfectants, gloves, sanitizers, masks, etc. are growing abruptly.
According to a report the marketing of masks, hand sanitizer, pocket sanitizer, etc. are growing at a very fast rate. The price of these items has been increased by at least about 50%. Sale of masks has been increased to 590%, on the other hand, the sale of sanitizers has been marked an increase of 420% that is more than expectations.
Retailers have found a way of marketing by introducing good looking masks and different types of sanitizers to get maximum profit. On different e-commerce websites, bright and attractive masks are available and people are purchasing as well.
eCommerce Websites Going Out-of-Stock
Talking about India, the well-known e-commerce website Amazon has reported a strain of out-of-delivery items for a couple of months. This is due to high demand rise items are running out of stock.
There is a huge growing competition for on-time delivery between various e-commerce websites available like Flipkart, Walmart, Amazon and many more.
According to the report of the past 2 months, Amazon has removed over a million items for violating its policies, for example, a retailer was claiming prevention of coronavirus from some kind of latex-free gloves and many such items that were against the policies and standard of amazon.
Online Food Delivery Business Is Hard-Hit
On the other hand, people are not dining out, infact, online food delivery is declining due to fear of being affected by the contaminated food in stages of preparation of food to deliver.
Many foods delivering websites have introduced the concept of contactless delivery to avoid contact with the delivery boy. They are even sending emails to customers to ensure safe delivery. But, despite all that food delivering websites are in the loss as compared to normal days as people are taking all the possible safety measures.
Moreover, due to the increasing work from the home culture in this situation, the closing of schools, colleges, and even some offices, people are spending a lot of time with television, particularly news channels, so ads are a good medium to promote different e-commerce websites.
Huge Losses for Online Travel Agents
Many countries have declared national emergencies and the governments have canceled many international flights to restrict international tours for different affected countries.
As a result of this many people have got their tickets canceled and a huge loss has been reported by many ticket booking websites like MakeMyTrip, Yatra and many more.
Due to this hazard, many people are refusing to travel from one place to another within the country also. This has led to the cancellation of tickets for busses, trains, and airways too.
Hence ticket booking platforms are facing loss due to the spread of Novel Coronavirus.
Entertainment Ticketing Websites
Theatres and movie cinemas are also closed in different countries to avoid public gathering hence many ticket booking websites are not in use, for example, Bookmyshow.com in India for booking tickets for movies, and different events which may lead to public gatherings.
Hence e-commerce business is suffering from ticket booking in India and even in almost all the affected countries.
Wrapping Up
In the short run, we can tell that in some fields e-commerce business is up and, in some fields, it is down, but we cannot certainly tell its long-run effect.
