Zuzana Dzilská, Kristián Kalamen, František Pollák
COVID-19 pandemic possessed many various implications to the society. With the main aim, to protect health of individuals, a set of government restrictions needed to be placed. One of the main one that was introduced shortly after COVID-19 breakout was social distancing. Due to that shopping behavior of many people has undergone a change which greatly impacted the e-commerce sector. This study aims to analyze the evolution of internet purchases performed in Finland in comparison to Sweden based on the urbanization differentiation available at Eurostat. The research method involves collection and analysis of data available at Eurostat and the findings indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic had different implications in these two countries, where Finland noted a greater increase in e-commerce turnover in suburb and rural areas whereas Sweden recorded more significant increase in individuals living in cities since the breakout of COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the study shows that even after the most significant pandemic times has passed, the number of purchases performed via e-commerce platforms has remained higher than during the pre-pandemic times. Thus, one could assume there is a change in the customer behavior to purchase more goods and services online.
