Electronic Commerce Research during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Bibliometric Analysis

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a significant shift towards electronic commerce (e-commerce), as people have turned to various methods of e-commerce to deal with imposed mobility restrictions. This paper provides a bibliometric analysis of the research conducted in the field of e-commerce, focusing on studies related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study aims to identify the key features, most influential papers, prevalent themes and methodologies, and the relationship between the terms used in the relevant publications. The data for the analysis was obtained from the Scopus database and consisted of 629 English-language research papers, book chapters, and review papers published between August 2020 and December 2022. BibExcel and VOSviewer software tools were utilized to assist with the selection of relevant information, perform the bibliometric analysis, and generate graphical representations of the results. The analysis indicates that China was the most productive geographical region, with the United States and India following closely behind. Sustainability journal from Switzerland was found to be the most productive in the field, followed by Frontiers in Psychology and the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. Bina Nusantara University in Indonesia was identified as the most productive institution, with Bucharest University of Economic Studies in Romania and Zhejiang University in China following closely behind. The most influential paper was found to be by Kim (2020), followed by Dannenberg et al. (2020), and Tran (2021). To address the limitations in the current literature, future research can undertake a comparative study of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the field of e-commerce over time, as well as analyze the dominant themes both prior to and post-pandemic. Investigating the correlation between disruptive events like the COVID-19 pandemic and the factors that drive e-commerce adoption constitutes a worthy and captivating field for future research.