Analysis of User Behavior in a C2C Platform during COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The e-commerce market, which has attracted much attention in recent years, has been growing rapidly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Among these, the growth of the market for consumer-to-consumer(C2C) transactions has been remarkable. However, few studies have analyzed the C2C market during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular, the behavioral tendencies of the sellers are not well understood. In this study, we used C2C market transaction data to analyze the behavior of users who joined the C2C platform during the COVID-19 pandemic and identified the users who continued to use it. We found that a large number of users registered for the service to trade face masks that were in short supply in the market due to heavy demand. In addition, among the users who traded masks, only the sellers continued to use the service at a high rate, suggesting that the successful experience of selling masks is important for seller retention. These results will provide useful insights to design and implement concrete strategies for seller retention. © 2021 IEEE.