{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,20]],"date-time":"2026-02-20T20:32:13Z","timestamp":1771619533024,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":63,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,9,4]],"date-time":"2023-09-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1693785600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100006595","name":"Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS-UEFISCDI","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["PN-III-P4-PCE-2021-0334"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["PN-III-P4-PCE-2021-0334"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100006595","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["JTAER"],"abstract":"<jats:p>This paper presents an empirical analysis of e-commerce data obtained through Google Analytics (GA) from two small businesses\u2019 perspectives: an IT components company and a tourism agency website located within the same county in Romania. The objective of our study is to examine the enduring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and seasonal variations over the last four years. The data collection spanned from January 2019, predating the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, until mid-February 2023. To facilitate our analysis, we categorize the GA metrics into groups that encompassed website performance, site accessibility, and user behavior for the IT company. As for the tourism agency, we focus on website accessibility, user behavior, and marketing campaigns. Our goal is to empirically group or associate GA metrics according to their intrinsic meaning and check if each group reflects a certain latent concept (such as user behavior or site accessibility). Furthermore, our study aims to formulate and test five hypotheses regarding the immediate and long-lasting impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the operations of small businesses. Our contribution consists of formulating and verifying the five hypotheses by providing descriptive data from the results of the Pearson correlation test, empirically grouping the GA metrics and verifying whether they reflect certain latent factors or topics, interpreting the results from the application of the ANOVA technique and Scarpello\u2019s adaptation of the one factor test, respectively.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/jtaer18030075","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,9,6]],"date-time":"2023-09-06T10:34:57Z","timestamp":1693996497000},"page":"1484-1510","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":7,"title":["Unraveling the Impact of Lockdowns on E-commerce: An Empirical Analysis of Google Analytics Data during 2019\u20132022"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"18","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0961-352X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Adela","family":"B\u00e2ra","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010374 Bucharest, Romania"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9005-5181","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Simona-Vasilica","family":"Oprea","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, 010374 Bucharest, Romania"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7340-8870","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Cristian","family":"Bucur","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Cybernetics, Economic Informatics, Finance and Accountancy, Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti, 100680 Ploiesti, Romania"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3507-2800","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Bogdan-George","family":"Tudoric\u0103","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Cybernetics, Economic Informatics, Finance and Accountancy, Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti, 100680 Ploiesti, Romania"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,9,4]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Delcea, C., Cotfas, L.-A., Cr\u0103ciun, L., and Mol\u0103nescu, A.G. 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