E-commerce has been predominant during the COVID-19 pandemic, and retailers have put much effort into building, improving, and promoting their online stores. S
E-commerce has been predominant during the COVID-19 pandemic, and retailers have put much effort into building, improving, and promoting their online stores. Some small retailers that did not manage online stores before the shutdown developed temporary solutions to sell their products online,e.g., by posting products on social media sites and by offering product pick-up or delivery services .Others have offered discounts for their online channels and started promotion campaigns on social media . A major German online platform acquired a large number of new partners in the second quarter of 2020 and thus substantially expanded its offers. Due to increasing demand, the company also invested in new technical solutions that improve platform performance and enable partners to better manage their business on the platform . To ensure that these efforts succeed, it is important to investigate consumers’ online purchase motives during this pandemic.Previous research on the determinants of purchase intentions in the context of e-commerce underlines the importance of both hedonic and utilitarian motives . While utilitarian motives refer to the usefulness of a behaviour , hedonic motives describe the entertainment and enjoyment experienced from engaging in a behaviour . However, the COVID-19 pandemic represents a unique situation, and determinants beyond those involving utilitarian and hedonic motives must be considered. During the crisis, there has been a high degree of media coverage relating to the pandemic, and consumers are exposed to a large amount of information regarding the current economic situation . The current crisis reveals the need to account for the normative influences of these authoritative third parties. Growing levels of economic uncertainty during the COVID-19 crisis provide a unique opportunity to investigate the ways in which both pressures stemming from information on the current economic situation available in the media and pressures stemming from close social networks influence
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