South Asian Journal of Social Studies and Economics

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on lifestyles and buying behavior. As a result, it amplified the usage of online marketing platforms. After the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers’ dependency did not change, and it remained the same or increased.  The outbreak of COVID-19 created significant changes in different ways in people's lives, not only in Bangladesh but also all around the world. Before the pandemic, consumers in Bangladesh barely used online marketing platforms; however, during the pandemic, it has become very common for them.

Aim: This paper intends to understand the efficacy of online marketing on customers' purchasing patterns during the time of COVID. It focuses on the present situation of online marketing and detects obstacles faced by consumers.

Methods: To measure effectiveness, a cross-sectional quantitative survey was conducted with 114 respondents using Google Forms. Respondents shared their experiences of online marketing. Microsoft Excel was used to record the responses, and SPSS was used to do the descriptive statistics, correlation, regression, and analysis of variance.

Results: Most people learned about online marketing platforms through websites, social media, and the internet. During the pandemic, consumers mostly depended on online marketing platforms. The results showed that a large number of consumers buy goods and services using online marketing platforms during the pandemic. It is also found that respondents buy online almost every month, followed by purchasing once every six months. Only a positive correlation was found between timely product delivery and the frequency of online market purchases. The oveall regression model was found to be statistically significant (p-value < 0.05). Additionally, it was observed an adjusted R-squared of 0.311. That means, the covariates of the regression model explained 31.1% of the total variation in the response variable. Respondents also identified various challenges, which include product information quality, satisfaction, and service experiences.

Conclusion: Even though consumers’ purchasing behavior was impacted by online marketing platforms during the time of COVID-19, the findings argue for better service delivery, transparency, product reliability, and enhanced consumer trust. The findings need to be understood in the context of a modest sample size and an uneven age distribution.