earticle

영어

The outbreak of the COVID-19 devastated many sectors of businesses around the world. This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on omnichannel sales, along with moderating effects of competition between nearby same brand stores and commercial vs. residential districts. We examine this by utilizing the channel (i.e., offline and online) sales data from South Korea's retailing company. The results indicate that a significant proportion of offline sales spilled over to online sales, although social distancing issued in South Korea is less stringent than complete lockdowns. In addition, we find evidence that the number of nearby same brand stores further accelerates sales loss from the pandemic in the offline channel. In contrast, the overall pattern in the online channel remains unchanged. Under the COVID-19 situation, we find online channels more stable than the offline channel in terms of moderating the effect of nearby same brand competition.