Keywords

6.1 Introduction

Pandemics are not exactly a novel phenomenon which changed the environment strictly since prehistoric times. Each time it triggered major challenges and changes in economics, regional and global policies, social behavior, and citizens’ mentalities and lifestyle. The corona virus first observed in the Wuhan city of China in December 2019 and thereafter spread in the whole world, people are dead for this virus and still now the spread is increasing. The disease has started from the seafood market of Wuhan city, where a lot of wild animals like rabbits, bats, snakes are traded and consumed. The Wuhan market has been recognized as an epicenter of the disease with a large number of patients contaminated having a history of visiting this market. The virus has rigorously affected the entire world in a monetary and nonmonetary term; this danger has been considered “very high” by the World Health Organization as well as other World Bank, and the World Health Organization has declared it a health emergency and named it as COVID 19. All states, continents, regions, urban and rural communities, families, and ultimately lifestyle of each individual have been impacted by the pandemic, and it had a hard blow to return to the normality previously experienced before COVID-19. When the threat of corona virus is hovering all over the world, governments across the countries are trying their best to fight with it, where the online business was highly commended for playing an important role in alleviating panic stockpiling behavior (Yao, 2020; Guo et al., 2020) during the starting of the pandemic. It is the fact that with the impact, the requirement of everyday life has not vanished. In the lockdown the business was slow with stoppage of online shopping at certain point of time when the spreading of the virus was at highest peak. With the new era of normalcy now, it is noted that people prefer online shopping more than going out as the trauma of COVID-19 still exists.

According to Rastogi (2010), the online business is having very bright future in India. With the innovation of Internet and online business, consumers can shop anywhere, anything, and anytime with easy and varied safe payment options. Consumers can even do comparison shopping by checking between product line, price, online stores. Now the virus has hampered economic activities, it is imperative to examine the detailed consequences of this virus on economy. Corona virus has affected the economy of the entire world, firstly more with Chinese economy, and because China is the second-largest economy in the world, its spillover effect is being seen all over the world. Intuitively, it can be noted that the crisis will not only leave many organization struggling for survival but will also force some to look for alternative strategic paths to maximize the present and future aspects of business. While on the one hand, the COVID-19 crisis has imposed enormous challenges on business organizations, on the other, it has also necessitated changes with innovations, presenting organizations with opportunities to identify new business models that will allow them to survive through the crisis. Service-related research work has focused on the effects of economic crises at the macro sectors (Das et al., 2011) as well as the impacts of crises and disasters on specific sectors including healthcare services noted by Ifanti et al. (2013). Any pandemic hampers monetary services (Talani, 2011), effecting the retail market (Ion, 2014), hospitality, and tourism industry (Jiang et al., 2019). To get to the normal environment, the leadership qualities must be effective which is characterized with decision-making factors. Schulz and Hofer (1995) suggested decision-making as a primary strategic resource in any organization. With various industrial revolutions, leadership is facing increase in complexity and ambiguity in the decision-making process. The global socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic creates an unprecedented opportunity for the Indian market to understand how the online business including service sector responses to such decisive situations and contribute to improved future research and practice.

This research work is based on comprehensive review of the various literatures on online business, the scenario during COVID-19, and how the people got affected. This chapter does not stand from any primary data collection and empirical investigation. It uses the results of the earlier research and the secondary data collected from various sources, to provide an overall context of the online business in Indian market. The major objective is to understand the situation of the online business due to COVID-19, the risk being faced by the employers of the online business, and how the online business can be recovered. The data and the information helped to derive the new business model which has been depicted with the pictorial diagram. The diagram which is a business model shows the change in business strategy benefiting the employees, consumers and the organization. This chapter shows that the impact of COVID-19 has devastated the life of the human beings. The online business and the online educational platforms have however changed the scenario and helped the people, from school going students to the other professionals. Some of the greatest challenges for organizations faced during pandemic can be recovered by changing the organizational environment and transformation in business models. In seeking ways to foster the normal way of life again, the health and safety of the employees should not be neglected.

6.2 Emergence of Online Business During Pandemic

Business is not only earning profit, it starts from developing a product with the purpose to be useful for the consumers. To reach to the end consumers, various processes are required to be covered by the business. They are product development, setting attractive pricing strategy, managing distribution channels, and availability for target consumers. For individual consumers to know about the product, the awareness about the product is essential. The traditional way of awareness creation was print media which is now mostly replaced by digital media. The information technology has tremendously brought a change in the world of Internet marketing, and now it is very much easy and presentable to communicate the buyers through Internet (Muttaqin, 2012). The websites, social media, and the apps are very much useful for communication. For example, knowing the details about the product, retrieving the reviews of the product, and query about the product by the consumers can be done. The online business has made the communication transparent than before, and the consumers can also be easily acquainted with, understand the product and take the purchasing decision (Sutejo, 2010).

At the present age, this online business is making commendable contribution in hosting a large number of small vendors. The process hardly received any government support during the supply chain disruption because it is fragmented and not considered essential by governments. Its growth was considerable during the last few year when the consumers from any age group, any status, or any income level changed their behavior toward online shopping. The easy access and trust in the mind of consumers are the reason that during the pandemics, consumers rushed to the e-commerce platforms for food or any products and got benefited. If they failed to place the orders, they could not easily switch to offline channels, which may intensify their panic for the products. In case of food ordering, the situations happened sometimes that the panic of food may even got amplified by the transparency of e-commerce platforms. The consumers could visualize clearly when there was a food rush in apps and suddenly in the next minute the food was sold out. Online purchasing channels are considered to help alleviate food hoarding panic or fashionable purchasing by providing a convenient shopping venue and eliminating consumers’ risk of getting infected with crowds in stores. Thus, online food delivery chain businesses are highly commended and have received good credits for its contribution in food distribution. On the other hand, the cosmetics and apparel shopping sites were moving downward in profit line as the consumers were truly interested in purchasing only the essential goods during the period of lockdown. The big business houses and the society will gain profit and it will be enhanced when the appropriate use of internet can be understood by the people. The applications are built to implement the internet as a medium of transactions between the company and its agents while enjoying the services available. The websites or the application forms should be easy to learn, understand, and hence influential through user performance to increase the use of the sites or the applications.

6.3 Impact of COVID-19 on Online Business

The online business in present market plays a major role in the economy development. It contributes 10% to the Indian GDP and showed a drastic rise in the employment creation in the FY19 with 8%. The major segments of the online business are the household and personal care products, healthcare segment, the food and beverage sector and miscellaneous. The food delivery platforms such as Swiggy and Zomato that were by itself functioning almost stopped functioning during lockdown and now started again but with a big hit. The social distancing due to the threat of COVID-19 pushed the consumers to overstock on essential product and commodities viz. rice, flour, and lentils. This gave rise in the sales of the FMCG companies which again saw fall in trade due to distorted supply chain management which is an impact of COVID-19. The e-commerce sector saw a plunge in growth with pressure on the supply chain deliveries and the expectations of the consumers on the companies to generate new distribution channels became the demand. Categorizing the commodities into two part, i.e., essential commodities and non-essential commodities showed different responses from the consumer’s behavior in the market. The online food, grocery, apparel, and textile industries or the other manufacturers specially the essential goods producers on the other hand suffered a huge loss due to the restriction of delivery vehicles and the lockdown. With the shortage of labor, the food processing units are facing a hunch in normal function post lockdown too. A major destination in the fight of COVID-19 for the next few months in the Indian export will be impacted due to low consumer demand.

The availability of online shopping platforms that allow consumers to shop for food or any other products over the Internet and have it either delivered to their home or set aside for curbside pick-up is one of the best option to reduce social distancing. Online food purchasing services also serve a public health interest by reducing contact between shoppers in retail food outlets, which may help to slow the transmission of COVID-19 and protect at risk consumers with pre-existing conditions. It is therefore important to understand to what extent consumers have shifted to online food shopping during the pandemic than before, and the implications of the shift for retail food markets with channel shifts for easy delivery and access. The other essential products, clothing, and personal care products were mostly purchased by online shopping websites or mobile apps. The online shopping and delivery at home is an important strategy that individuals have used and still now using to reduce the likelihood of exposure to COVID-19. Due to the high risk faced by the elderly or those with chronic medical conditions, the need to isolate oneself from others in the community is necessary. It is only possible if food can be obtained from home or from apps used for online purchase and online delivery. In addition, the use of online shopping platforms can generate a positive public health externality by taking safety measure more scrupulously. When safety is the main precaution in the pandemic which caused lockdown, safety compliance is must. Safety compliance refers to core safety precautionary tasks individuals carry out to maintain workplace safety (Griffin & Neal, 2000). There has to be some set of objectives in the area of safety to meet an organization’s safety requirements, as well as wearing personal protective equipment. Griffin and Neal (2000) proposed that safety compliance is influenced by each and every staff’s safety knowledge, safety skills, and safety motivation, which are influenced by the organization’s safety and protective climate.

The use of online business platform was highly responsive to media coverage of the pandemic. There was an opportunity for public health officials to successfully promote online shopping through public service announcements. The educational sites or apps also played and are still playing vital role in this crisis. The students cannot go to school but had online classes through the apps. The Indian education sector is surely going to witness major transformation in the years to come where education will be based mostly on latest technology rather than traditional methods (Lone, 2017). The change is the result of corona virus where students have a positive attitude toward online learning, which implies that they are more likely to accept it for future learning.

6.3.1 The Consumption Process During COVID-19

To maintain safe and healthy lifestyle, the human beings adopted the following consumption processes:

  1. 1.

    Where consumption occurs (spatial aspects): Restrictions to mobility or enforced physical distancing for the benefit of human beings. Purchasing essential goods in the areas close to the consumer’s residence to avoid distance travel. Also order through telephone or online (Pantano et al., 2020). For this, supply and delivery chains should be available with minimal contact.

  2. 2.

    When consumption occurs (temporal aspects): Availability of access to different products as a result of disasters because the people faces terror and goes for panic buying or pushed back depending on risk perceptions (Peck, 2006).

  3. 3.

    What and why consumption occurs: The quarantine and mobility restrictions to home environments, have psychological and physiological effects depending on what products are consumed as a result of different motivations and needs (Forbes, 2017).

  4. 4.

    How consumption occurs: Restrictions in physical contact favor some forms of purchasing relations over others. For example, it influences the payment form by encouraging contactless purchasing rather than use of cash which is mostly possible by online shopping (Pal & Bhadada, 2020).

6.3.2 Shifting and Unfolding the Business

Shifts in business re-structuring are immediate reactions to the pandemic and once “normalcy” resumes, firms will revert to their earlier business models or find a new equilibrium to settle at. Yet, the prospect that the pandemic has presented to digitize a business or identify a viable alternative business structure by restructuring and refiguring the techniques can well be utilized by firms that are trying to stabilize and looking to expand their horizons. In order to capitalize on the opportunity for digitization, the employers need to be agile and rapidly develop capabilities that can help them survive the changes that environment imposes upon them in future. The pulsating capabilities relating to specific strategic and organizational processes like product re-development, identifying and working with new partners in an ecosystem and strategic decision-making that create value within such lively environments by manipulating available resources into new value-creating strategies (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000). A good example of such organizations would be education sector which have not only adapted online platforms to hold virtual classes and examinations but have also designed educational products which combine interesting asynchronous instructional pedagogies. Similarly the online retail business is adopting techniques to hold the market in the pandemic (Ray, et al., 2020). But as the products are highly delivered from around the world, there is low productivity and sales in the present scenario of the pandemic. The environment now demands for “temporary adhocracies” which function with the sole purpose of innovating. Such adhocracies require strong professionals, such as design thinkers, marketers, technologists. They all together will aim to quickly fulfill the growing choice for digitization the product or service offers, look for digital replacements and where neither is possible, identify ways of delivering the product or service with minimal physical contact.

6.4 Factorial Influence of COVID-19 on Online Business

6.4.1 The Slowdown of Online Business During COVID-19 Situation

The trend of online ordering is present with numerous benefits compared to the conventional methods of shopping over the phone call or waiting in queue (Li et al., 2020). Since the starting of corona virus, many food and grocery delivery companies are grappling to deliver the products which are both essential and nonessential. The online food deliver platforms like Zomato, Swiggy are facing hurdles across cities while trying to deliver food. Online food delivery orders have dropped drastically in the first 15 days of lockdown in India. Slowly the delivery got totally stopped during the lockdown period. It was due to fear and anxiety, the customers stepped back to place orders and food stalls or top restaurants being shut amid a lockdown. The employees, the staffs, and the delivery boys cannot take risk of their life and that delivery of the products stopped. To save from the huge loss and corona virus, the companies were forced to shut the counters due to shortage of staff and supplies. With the extension of lockdown till May 31, 2020, Swiggy the online food delivery firm decided to lay off 1100 of its employees. The firm considered the decision as the “unfortunate downsizing decision” as the coronavirus continues to hurt the business. Again Zomato reduced their employees to nearly 13% because of the crisis. Now when the delivery has been started by Swiggy or Zomato, the customers are reluctant to understand how much safe the outside food will be. It can be considered observing the situation that going forward the customers may not prefer outside food rather they will take home-cooked meals. During COVID-19 lockdown, the Swiggy and Zomato also delivered the daily groceries and essentials as the food ordering dropped hugely. The home consumption has increased during the lockdown but out-of-home consumption which statistically generates the highest margin has come to nearly in a standstill indicating changes in customer behavior and demand of shacking the Indian economy during the pandemic. Wang et al. (2020) analyzed that the various responses to the COVID-19 global pandemic will shape the online food delivery chain in 2020 and post pandemic. The customers should critically identify the top online food purchasing trends that customers and businesses must remain aware of.

6.4.2 Effects on Job Market Due to COVID-19 Situation

Due to the shortage of resources and raw materials, and slowing of the supply chain, the factory owners have to close down the factory. The manufacturing of the products and delivery of the products were stuck during the pandemic. Moreover, global brands and retailers due to the chaotic situation first delayed and later canceled production orders and deferred the payment too. As a result, in the apparel manufacturing industries, the apparel workers had to go back to their natives without any salaries, and henceforth, their sufferings started with their families. People with uncertain work environment are more diagnosed with various diseases such as chronic stress, mental health, physical, and instability in their work–family life (Blustein, 2019). These factors became more risky, affecting the working class people during COVID-19 crisis. During the lockdown, few factories continued their production without ensuring safety to the workers. The apparel workers are in the most vulnerable situation where their health was not the major importance for the employers till certain time. The affected sectors of the whole supply chain of few industries, i.e., automobile, energy, steel, textile, coal, agriculture, and electronic devices including mobile, etc. have been traumatized. Among the most affected industry, the apparel industry is one of the highest with abrupt increase in unemployment. As China has stopped the production and delivery of raw materials, the other apparel manufacturing countries like Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Myanmar, etc. apparel industry have shaken. According to the data released by the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI), the recovery for the domestic market is expected to be quite hard post pandemic with huge loss and domestic market estimated to reach USD 120 billion (INR 9074 billion) by 2024. Apparel retail is even projected to contract by ~USD 27 billion (INR 2042 billion) in FY 2020–2021 as compared to pre-COVID-19 analysis for the same period. In the overall scenario, the online business for garments were also in a weak position during the crisis of the pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis brought the economy of the world in low level with vast increase in unemployment where competition between workers existed. The ultimate outcome that will be faced for long run is major dislocation of young workers from the labor market (International Labor Organization, 2020). The scenario of the private companies, especially IT companies, BPOs, and hotel industries, is worst. A huge number of employees were forced to leave the organizations in the critical situation. The reason shown by the management is COVID-19 or some unjustifiable circumstances.

6.4.3 Bit to Byte Technology Updation

Each of the online shopping site aims to create a point of difference from others in their line of products, offers, delivery process, and after delivery problem-solving techniques. Whenever upgradation of the technology has been occurred, it means there is change or shift of the technology for the benefit of the general people globally. At the present stage of pandemic, the technological progression is required to cope up the crisis situation by providing customers the alternative to share their shortlisted items with their companions through SMS, email, and social networking channels by a single click and of course buying the product. The 67% online baskets are deserted due to lack of payment options. So, now to improve the process few online business houses has started to offer different payment options such as COD, credit card, debit card, and net banking. There are also increase in coupon, and other offers to attract the prospective customers increase the sale. COVID-19 disruptions affected all businesses more or less equally. The shops where essential goods are available remained open, while others were required to close. Some businesses could shift employees to remote work, while others were ill equipped for the evolution. The way the business houses has managed to help brands in their go-to-market strategy at the onset of the pandemic is just the beginning of using data insights to make the industry more consumer focused. The consumers in late March 2020 and consulting firm Retail Systems Research found 90% of shoppers were hesitant to shop in stores because of the spread of the virus and wanted no face-to-face interaction which is called untact. This is great for the e-commerce companies with updating other options on their shopping sites and escalating the number of sorting and filtering options. The incorporation of different items to stay safe at the situation is a tricky business plot to increase the consumers on online shopping. But with the crowd of online orders, it becomes difficult for the companies to cater all the orders at once, due to limited manpower and less supply. Basically companies do online business to achieve more target-oriented consumers. The consumers who are using Internet, smartphone, computers, and surfing the websites without going outside for shopping. They get the benefit out of online business and the employers must improve the technology, so that there can be easy adding of items, options, and making the website colorful and attractive for the buyers. This will contribute to the company’s financial firmness, sustainability to compete better in the business market. Long-term relationships with the business stakeholders and the customer satisfaction are present because of the service provided. In the present pandemic situations, the effectiveness of the online shopping was felt by each of citizens all over the world (Winwin & Meiryani, 2019).

6.4.4 No Stoppage on Flow of Education

COVID-19 has resulted in a mass shift toward holding online classes for the students. Institutions are yearning for different ways to engage their students and to complete their courses and examinations in time. According to the UNESCO report, it had affected the studies of more than 90% of total world’s student population during mid-April 2020 which is reduced to nearly 67% during June 2020. Every year in India. lakhs of students of the final year are happy to complete the course and get job. But with the starting of the pandemic this happiness is somewhere lost and the students are in doubt that how they will complete their final year and when will they acheive their goals. It is true that there is always restrain in our life but the scenario is now diffferent and fully disappointing when all opportunities are on hold from competitive examinations to company hire. Still the live sessions holding by the popular platforms for conducting meetings and conferences like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Team with many others has helped the students to continue their studies and attending job interviews too. The school students of the higher classess are benefited by online learning classes of extra marks, BYJU’s. These online learning platforms have divided the sujects and the contents for easy online teaching-learning process. The other academicians and corporate professionals have also gained knowledge from online education platforms like Udemy, Simplilearn. Post pandemic, these online education platforms are highly used, and few more are coming up to make the knowledge delivery and learning process easier. Educational mobile apps saw a spike in usage during pandemic till now compared to years before. There are also WhatsApp groups of guardians, teachers, students, and parents for effective communication between the stakeholders of the education through which they are always in touch to share their difficulties via this e-medium. ICT initiative of MHRD (e-Brochure—https://mhrd.gov.in/ict-initiatives) is a unique platform which combines all digital resources for online education, through which the students will be beneficent (Bag et al., 2020). The digital initiatives by the MHRD for secondary as well as higher education during COVID-19 have helped in continuing the academic sessions. The Indian Government and different stakeholders of education have explored the possibility of open and distance learning (ODL) in a very innovative way by adopting different digital technologies to cope up with the present crisis of COVID-19 (Jena, 2020). It saves time but college administrators should determine how technical support can be expanded and extended to reach all students and teachers, thereby improving their experience and making the classes more effective (Nambiar, 2020).

6.5 Post-COVID-19: A Way to Normal

It has been observed that the crisis caused by the global corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic has created an incredibly complicated business climate. Businesses are being presented with many new risks as international borders close, businesses shut their doors, and people are told to isolate at home. The buying process or the customer behavior toward the essential and nonessential products has been forced to immediately change, they were certainly tensed with pandemic, and this change has come on a massive scale. Those in isolation or under lockdown cannot perform their usual routines, especially since many local shops have been forced to close their doors for safety reasons as per the government rules. Concerns about the availability of goods during lockdown especially have encouraged panic buying of items in bulk. To help the people all over the world, the online stores of all sizes stand to help the people. The switch of consumer behavior to online shopping is mostly observed during the pandemic until its fully lockdown, since the online stores are already well-positioned or established to serve the increasing demand for goods and services. If we look around the hospitality context, particularly restaurants, most of the researchers have focused on food handlers and food safety criteria majorly post pandemic because restaurants have been labeled as one of the most frequent settings for food-borne illness outbreaks (Murphy et al., 2011). Here the supply chain transformation is playing a major role. The chain has to be in smooth flow to avoid congestion in the overall delivery procedure, which was not stable in the pandemic because of many different reasons and situations. After the lockdown, the companies are already starting to be clever enough about resolving the business-related hindrances through innovation.

The global sustainability includes economic, social, and environmental risks and issues which enforces the firms to re-think and redesign their practices to manage their relationships with suppliers by collaboration or assessment transforming the supply chain if required (Ni & Sun, 2018). But challenges surely exist in the online business as is not a magic bullet in itself, i.e., sudden change in decision of transformation of the whole business. As the channel shift is a major part to run the profit. The lower income group consumers sometimes cannot go for adoption of the online purchasing which is a dampening effect against any uplift in sales. The companies with robust ecommerce offerings will fare the best in the current turmoil. The buyer behavior has changed and resulted in more and more shopping online over the period of time. To meet the customers’ demand, the marketplace changed to become ever more competitive as companies seek to capitalize on this trend. For increase in money making, the organizations have to look after the requirements of the employees. The pandemic has already made the employees frustrated or depressed with lockdown and no growth in career. The conditions of the employees have to be understood by the employers. In this pandemic and post pandemic, the awareness should be 100% on the health and safety measures of the employees of any organization. If required, the workforce should be allowed to work remotely. The resources should be provided with the best facilities and relaxation in working techniques. There should be smooth flow of communication within the team members and the supervisors. This will increase happiness in the employees, decreasing the boredom and stress. The increase in production means the organization should give major preference to health and safety of their employees with encouragement. A creative working style must be development where open communication with managers is identified (Kylen & Shani, 2002). It means that contributions to the ways and procedures of communication must not be excluded beforehand by bureaucratic rules or controlling supervision. The managers’ role for smooth and transparent communication helps in task fulfillment and work hour flexibility (Bag & Aich, 2021). Hence, the online business will bloom. Management introduction and regular review to safety have been identified as an organizational factor that can drive profound compliance (Hu et al., 2020). Management has to start creating perceptions of commitment to safety among employees post-COVID-19 with safety rules and procedures to protect workers from being infected and stop possible transmission during service encounters. The process should be made mandatory by maintaining the health concern of every employees and business up growth in the post-COVID-19.

Shutting down of malls and shops has strictly hurt business for all retailers. This has led to major job losses as companies will not be able to sustain this for too long. The process of business might change post pandemic. The cooperation among all the employees at all levels has to be understood to save life, job, and the company. All these working together will benefit the employees, the business, and the customers to mitigate corona virus. In respect to stay in the competitive online business, the technology has to be fully modern because if the online shopping site is not found in search engines for relevant searches, the site’s responsiveness lags behind other competitors. Resulting in the ability to compete will be severely diminished. The company’s digital strategy need to be scrutinized regularly, which suggests some initial steps companies could take to review their current offering and help safeguard their business in these troubled times.

Figure 6.1 represents the path and direction which can be followed to make changes in the organization for the benefit of the organization as well as the employees. Here is the discussion for the process to be followed as shown in the diagram.

Fig. 6.1
figure 1

A business model to prioritize the health of the employees with profit maximization post pandemic

Full size image

The organizations have to take care about the health of the resources, i.e., the employees or the staffs who are working whole heartedly. Health awareness should be the first priority for the organization. When employees perceive that management is genuinely worried about health and safety of the staffs, they are more motivated to engage themselves at their work and behave safely (Christian et al., 2009).

Here the figure is divided into two parts where the employees come to office daily and work to create or develop the product. In the other case, the employees cannot come to the office because of the ill health. But if the employee is skillful, knowledgeable, and has the capability to handle any task provided to him, he can fulfill the task with autonomy based on the expertise in his field. So, those employees should be retained in the organization by giving them work from home facilities.

At this stage, the manager has to be cooperative and transparent with the communication. There should be fairness in the division of work too. Sometimes an employee get stressed and bored while working from home. The organization should help the employees to reduce stress and to work happily. The employee may work from any location, but there should be generation of teamwork in any situation. Ray, This is possible through true leadership quality of managers and developing cordial relationships among the team members.

The employees from both work from office and work from home finally developed the product. Now, it has to be delivered to the end user. Industries such as food-retailing, FMCG, and many others retailers’ business are growing with models. The models have been affected as the retail mix has changed with introduction of online channels (Sorescu et al., 2011), and their customers’ behavior has been changed while taking the buying decision due to these developments. Thus, marketing channels of distribution and supply chain management should be stable to compete in the market. If cannot be done properly, it needs to be modified and transformed in the path which is easy for all, from manufacturers, suppliers till the end consumer. It is believed that supply chain management is the efficient management of the end-to-end process from designing, planning, restructuring and forecasting, sourcing through complex supplier networks, manufacturing, and distributing products from raw material to the end customer, and the final disposal of the product by the customer (Chan & Lee, 2005). So, by the help of proper channels and supply chain management, the product is delivered to the end user without delay.

In recent years, we have observed a further digitalization in marketing and retailing with specific channel shift and challenges (Leeflang et al., 2014). Specifically, with the technological advancement of the mobile, tablets, social media, and the integration of these new channels in online retailing, the e-commerce platform or the landscape continues to change in the post pandemic. The resources from anywhere they work, if they are healthy, will bring profit to organization. The production of any organization depends on the employees which defines the product is created by individual performance or group performance, even if other individuals may have provided clues and stimulation (Ekvall, 1997, p. 195). This implies that the employees work all together or individually for product creation where there is satisfactory work culture.

6.6 Conclusion

The list of various factors for businesses will be the level of readiness of their ecommerce offering. If the online business platform is not capable of offering a competitive user experience, the chances are it will fail to entice, impress, or retain customers. It is to ensure easy and uninterrupted availability of essential food and grocery products or beauty and fashionable items at affordable prices so that people do not panic. During this critical time, it is imperative for all stakeholders to come together. The widespread effect of COVID-19, business across sectors is looking gloomy, impacting economy at large. Ensuring that ecommerce site or app is optimized and ready will be critical in the success of any online offering, and the tactics needs to be implemented in an increasingly competitive landscape.

For the businesses that remain active at this time, questions may arise inevitably that how best to cope with the prevailing trading market, and the best strategies that should be adapted. Any asked or enquiry related to business is not easy to answer since the corona virus pandemic is so new that the circumstances are changing fluidly and on a daily basis. Defining a strategy now is difficult, and the strategies will change whenever required as there is limited evidence or precedent to base assumptions on. The data of surveys by government and nongovernment organizations are not sufficient to gauge the consumers purchasing style and business. Still the face of the organization has to be changed depending on what and how the buyers demand.