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The Covid-19 pandemic has a strong effect on societies, business and consumers. Governments have taken measures to reduce the spread of the pandemic, such as social distancing and lockdowns. The latter has also resulted in a temporary closure of physical stores for “non-essential” retailing. Covid-19 thus has a profound impact on how people live. The period of relative isolation, social distancing and economic uncertainty changes the way we behave. New consumer behaviors span all areas of life, from how we work to how we shop to how we entertain ourselves. These shifts have important implications for retailers. This paper aims to discuss the potential structural effect on shopping behavior and retailing when Covid-19 measures are no longer needed and society moves back to a normal situation.

The paper synthesizes empirical and conceptual literature on the consequences of COVID-19 and introduces a conceptual framework along with a set of predictions that can be investigated with empirical data.

This study suggests that Covid-19 shapes both consumer needs and behavior and how retailers respond to these changes. Moreover, it suggests that this will not only affect market outcomes (i.e. retail sales and market share online) but also firm outcomes (i.e. customer experience, firm sales) and importantly the competition between online and offline retailers.

In the conceptual framework, this study aims to advance knowledge on longer-term outcomes (vs immediate outcomes such as panic buying) and how COVID-19 is changing the competitive landscape of retail.

The effects of the spread of COVID-19 across the world are devastating, both from a health and an economic perspective. However, we also see encouraging examples of collaborative and innovative initiatives, in society and in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to focus on initiatives related to digital business model innovation. The authors explore how organizational characteristics provide a variety of opportunities for digital responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss the potential consequences for the speed of digital transformation in organizations and society.

In this paper, the authors analyze how organizations attempt to mitigate the negative effects of fighting COVID-19 using digital business model responses. The authors draw on a qualitative study where they have collected data from the retail and service industries. They have analyzed the data in relation to theory to better understand this ongoing phenomenon.

The authors have identified four categories of organizations (crisispreneurs, accelerators, endurers and thrivers). Each category faces different challenges and shows a different intensity in their digital transformation. The authors propose that the rapid turn toward digital business models will have enduring effects, as organizations have gained transformational capabilities that will remain, and that the digital trajectory has, as a result, changed forever.

The findings in this paper point toward new challenges for leaders and policymakers in terms of how to support initiatives and meet the needs of different categories of organizations while simultaneously being conscious of the potential societal effects of this rapid digital shift. The authors hope that this paper can be of value for managing this shock and learning how to adapt for the future taking certain aspects of current business models as the departure point.

The main aim of the paper is to establish the effects of appropriately organized work as well as the effects of the employees' concerns related to work during the COVID-19 pandemic on work efficiency and work satisfaction among employees working from home during this period. The empirical research includes 619 employees in Slovenia, who participated in the survey during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Structural equation modeling was used in exploring the effects between constructs.

Based on the results, the authors found that appropriately organized work during the COVID-19 pandemic has a positive effect not only on the work efficiency of employees who work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic in Slovenia but also on their work satisfaction. Also, based on the results, the authors found that the employees' concerns related to work during the COVID-19 pandemic have a negative effect on the work efficiency and on the work satisfaction of employees who work from home during this period in Slovenia.

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way we live and work; therefore, this paper contributes to the creation of new working conditions and employee management during and also after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which appeared in China in late 2019, has affected the world psychologically, socially and economically in 2020. Tourism is one of the areas where the effects of COVID-19 have been felt most clearly. The study aims to determine the effect of negative problem orientation (NPO) and perceived risk related to the COVID-19 pandemic on travel and destination visit intention.

This study employed a convenience and probabilistic sampling method for collecting data from 531 respondents using an online questionnaire. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for testing research model.

According to the findings, NPO and perceived risk related to the pandemic were found to have direct and indirect effects on the travel behavior of tourists. The results of this research provide theoretical and practical implications for hospitality and travel businesses on topics such as the psychological effects of the pandemic and the travel behaviors of tourists.

It is estimated that the pandemic will also affect tourist behavior due to its effects on human psychology. For this reason, a study conducted in the context of tourist behavior theories is expected to contribute to the literature, managers and future of the tourism.

The border closure and lockdowns due to Covid-19 pandemic resulted in partial closure of many industrial and commercial complexes, halted the performance of key strategic sectors such as logistics and supply chains, and thus disrupted the global value chains and the economy. The authors argue, however, that the pursuit of survival has driven companies to innovate and use digitization to overcome the negative consequences of the pandemic. More specifically, in this paper the authors aim to assess the success and challenges faced by companies in digitization policy design, adoption and implementation and their effects on firms’ operation, outputs and customer base during Covid-19.

Sixty-one samples of the companies surveyed between 10 January and 30 April 2021 were analyzed, using the Krushkal–Wallis test and Independent-Samples Mann–Whitney U test to identify the relationships between variables including operation, overall output, customer base, digitization policy, technology use and implementation costs of new technologies.

Results revealed a positive impact of digitization on the operation and overall outputs, while no effect was observed on the customer base. Analysis also showed that only 1.8% of companies were able to fully implement digitization, and that the cost of technology prevented most companies from using emerging technology or implementing their digitization policy.

While the research has practical implications, it is not without flaws. For instance, the outcome of technology varies as per geographic area and people. The study was conducted in the Sultanate of Oman, a developing country in the Middle East region; therefore, it is difficult to generalize the outcomes suited to developed countries. The developed countries usually have a population quite used to the advanced technologies so some of the issues raised in the study might not work in the logistics and supply chain sectors of the developed countries. Such countries need separate studies.

The findings will have implications for both supply chain companies as well as the technology providers. The supply chain companies will invest in technology infrastructure and add technology as an important component in their business models. The technology providers will consider the costs of implementation and adoption issues of technology in the supply chain companies.

To the best of authors' knowledge, no work has been produced on logistics and supply chain companies considering the technological sustainability during the time of Covid-19. The study will improve understanding of the digitization policy design, adoption and implementation and their effects on logistics and supply chain companies’ performance.

This research aims to analyse the perceptions of practitioners in three regions regarding the challenges faced by their firms during the pandemic, considered a black-swan event. It examines the strategies implemented to mitigate and recover from risks, evaluates the effectiveness of these strategies and assesses the difficulties encountered in their implementation.

In the summer of 2022, an online survey was conducted among supply chain (SC) practitioners in France, Poland and the St. Louis, Missouri region of the USA. The survey aimed to understand the impact of COVID-19 on their firms and the SC strategies employed to sustain operations. These regions were selected due to their varying levels of SC development, including infrastructure, economic resources and expertise. Moreover, they exhibited different responses in safeguarding the well-being of their citizens during the pandemic.

The study reveals consistent perceptions among practitioners from the three regions regarding the impact of COVID-19 on SCs. Their actions to enhance SC resilience primarily relied on strengthening collaborative efforts within their firms and SCs, thus validating the tenets of the relational view.

COVID-19 is (hopefully) our black-swan pandemic occurrence during our lifetime. Nevertheless, the lessons learned from it can inform future SC risk management practices, particularly in dealing with rare crises. During times of crisis, leveraging existing SC structures may prove more effective and efficient than developing new ones. These findings underscore the significance of relationships in ensuring SC resilience.

This paper aims to investigate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the interaction in a business-to-business (BtoB) setting and the emerging relational dynamics. The COVID-19 pandemic is having a strong impact on BtoB markets in terms of the stop of production, the difficulty of coping with payments, restrictions on the flows of people and goods within national and international markets. The paper discusses that the effects of worldwide lockdowns, social distancing and other related restrictions undermine one of the salient features of business relationships, namely interaction.

The paper relies on a qualitative interpretivist approach based on the data collected from in-depth interviews with key informants and secondary sources. The fashion industry is taken as an emblematic case, given the relevance of BtoB relationships, especially those between global fashion brands and their suppliers, and the dramatic impact of the pandemic.

The paper shows four effects in terms of relational dynamics. The freezing effect is the maintaining of interaction at minimum operating levels capable of ensuring survival for both interacting actors. The ripple effect can be conceived as a negative effect of the pandemic related to the weakening of the freezing effects in interactions along the supply chain. The rebound effect is a sudden increase in interactive processes among existing relationships. The vicious effect is a negative effect of the pandemic on the interaction that refers to the decay of existing interaction and their ending.

This study fits into the current period of the COVID-19 pandemic to stress the role of interaction involving people and businesses as a key to restart. The paper suggests managerial implications to respond to the pandemic in the short term and to set the basis for future opportunities.

The main purpose of this study is to make a comparative evaluation of the impacts of previous outbreaks and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the tourism industry. COVID-19 appears to have disrupted all memorizations about epidemics ever seen. Nobody has anticipated that the outbreak in late December will spread rapidly across the world, be fatal and turn the world economy upside down. Severe acute respiratory syndrome, Ebola, Middle East respiratory syndrome and others caused limited losses in a limited geography, thus similar behaviors were expected at first in COVID-19. But it was not so. Today, people continue to lose their lives and experience economic difficulties. One of the most important distressed industries is undoubtedly tourism.

This study is a literature review. In this review, a comparative evaluation between the impact of previous outbreaks and COVID-19 on the tourism industry has been made based on statistics and previous research studies.

The information and figures obtained show that COVID-19 and previous outbreaks have such significant differences that cannot be compared. COVID-19 has been one of the worst to live in terms of spreading speed, the geography where it spreads, loss of lives and negative effects in the whole area.

It is noteworthy that COVID-19 is very severe in terms of death cases and also its impacts on the economy compared to other pandemics. It remains to be argued that COVID-19 can also be a reference in terms of possible new outbreaks in the future, and is an effective actor in determining future strategies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the ‘real’ world and substantially impacted the virtual world and thus the Internet ecosystem. It has caused a significant exogenous shock that offers a wealth of natural experiments and produced new data about broadband, clouds, and the Internet in times of crisis. In this chapter, we characterise and evaluate the evolving impact of the global COVID-19 crisis on traffic patterns and loads and the impact of those on Internet performance from multiple perspectives. While we place a particular focus on deriving insights into how we can better respond to crises and better plan for the post-COVID-19 ‘new normal’, we analyse the impact on and the responses by different actors of the Internet ecosystem across different jurisdictions. With a focus on the USA and Europe, we examine the responses of both public and private actors, with the latter including content and cloud providers, content delivery networks, and Internet service providers (ISPs). This chapter makes two contributions: first, we derive lessons learned for a future post-COVID-19 world to inform non-networking spheres and policy-making; second, the insights gained assist the networking community in better planning for the future.