  The recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has infected millions
of citizens worldwide and claimed many lives. This paper examines its impact on
the Chinese e-commerce market by analyzing behavioral changes seen from a large
online shopping platform. We first conduct a time series analysis to identify
product categories that faced the most extensive disruptions. The time-lagged
analysis shows that behavioral patterns seen in shopping actions are highly
responsive to epidemic development. Based on these findings, we present a
consumer demand prediction method by encompassing the epidemic statistics and
behavioral features for COVID-19 related products. Experiment results
demonstrate that our predictions outperform existing baselines and further
extend to the long-term and province-level forecasts. We discuss how our market
analysis and prediction can help better prepare for future pandemics by gaining
an extra time to launch preventive steps.
