COVID-19 pandemic well-known worldwide for its serious health consequences is having a profound effect on every sphere of life. Taking into consideration that COVID-19 is harming the labor market and economic activity in general, we also consider that this situation is affecting the personal consumption expenditures in case of Kosovo (Ziberi, Rexha, & Gashi, 2021). The main aim of this paper is to analyze how the customers’ behavior will shift the traditional business to an online one in case of Western Balkan countries with special emphasis on Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania. The study considered the mixed methods using the questionnaire as a method for primary data collection in a random sample of citizens from countries in the analysis. The questionnaire was distributed online using social media in a sample of 1250 respondents. The paper uses the SPSS software for data analysis and hypotheses testing. The study comes to the conclusion that buying behavior is changing due to the imposed measures by governance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the confidence in online shopping has increased significantly which is a good base for further recommendations for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to start reworking selling strategies and to shift their activity from purely traditional to hybrid one — traditional and online — promoting so better the traditional business. Our findings also are in line with a study by Bytyçi (2020) who stated that the consumers in case of the Republic of Kosovo prefer online shopping for one main reason — time loss reduction.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the significant factors that influence the demand for goods online for the B2C market in Albania and how to build customer loyalty in this type of market. The main assumptions are: 1. The price of products are very important for the development of the demand in electronic commerce in Albania, in the B2C market. 2. There is a statistical significance of sociodemographic variables in the price of products and services in e-commerce? Methodology used: A sample of 500 questionars were used. Each questionere had 13 question. Have been used 100% of the questionnaires. The first question of the questionnaire survey excluded those who had made purchases online. The choice was made on an occasional grouping of the participants for age, sex and education. The questionnaires were completed in the two main cities of Albania, Tirana and Durres. The work is based on primary and secondary data for the case of Albania. Using the regression analysis, we have built a multi-pattern econometrics model, emphasizing the importance of price in the development of the online market in Albania. The results and conclusions of this paper are significant. Albania marks the highest growth in terms of Internet usage in the region, which means an enormous potential for the development of electronic commerce in Albania. The price factor is still the main factor influencing the tendency of buyers to make their purchase online.

Abstract