Stock market’ reaction of global e-commerce listed firms: an event study for different phases of COVID-19 pandemic

Susana Cró, Pedro Correia, Ricardo Gouveia and António Miguel Martins

Journal of Economic Studies, 2025, vol. 53, issue 7, 1326-1339

Abstract: PurposeThis article examines the short-term market reaction of global e-commerce firms around different phases of COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine the impact of different phases of COVID-19 on global e-commerce firms using an event study methodology.FindingsWe find a positive and statistically significant reaction of e-commerce firms to the first case of COVID-19, to the declaration of global health emergency by the WHO, the three waves of COVID-19 contamination and to the good results of Pfizer vaccine trials. The disruption caused by COVID-19 in retail, the accelerated trend towards electronic commerce and the strong link between self-intention to self-isolate and intention to make unusual purchases, may explain the positive reaction of e-commerce stocks in the first phase of COVID-19. The restored opportunity to spend and pent-up demand tend to explain the positive market returns found in the last phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, the declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic and the lockdown announcements in each country seem to be bad news for e-commerce firms, which observe an abnormal negative and statistically significant return. The reduction of consumer expenses and precautionary savings to self-insure against the risk of unemployment tends to explain these results. These reactions are reinforced or mitigated by firm-specific characteristics such as liquidity, profitability, leverage and e-commerce main activity.Originality/valueTo our best knowledge, it is the first study that analyses the impact of different phases of COVID-19 on the market returns of e-commerce global firms. This study intends to fill this gap in the literature.

Keywords: E-commerce; COVID-19; Stock market reaction; Event study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/jes/article/53/7/1326/1300 ... al-e-commerce-listed (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/jes/article-pdf/53/7/1326/ ... s-03-2025-0156en.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jespps:jes-03-2025-0156

DOI: 10.1108/JES-03-2025-0156

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Studies is currently edited by Prof Mohsen Bahmani-Oskooee

More articles in Journal of Economic Studies from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().