Covid-19 Impacts on Businesses Using Yelp Datasets
This article will be looking at Yelp’s Business information and review dataset to gain a further understanding of how small and medium Size businesses are being affected by Covid-19. The dataset used will cover information from 2004 until January 2021 for all the states in the US. Moreover, the article will discuss the overall business performance and activities, then taking a further look at each individual business category. Some future outlooks and considerations will be given in the end.
1. Review Counts As An Indicator of Business Performance
The article will be using the number of review counts as an indicator of business performance. A higher number of reviews would indicate more customers during a certain time period and a lower number of reviews would indicate fewer customers and lower business activity.
Looking from the Review Counts Per Year chart, we can see that the number of review counts keeps increasing over years until 2019, and there is a sharp drop in 2020.
From the Over Years Percentage Changes chart, we can see that 2019, and 2020 are the first years that Yelp is experiencing negative percentage change relative to last year’s review numbers. Note that 2021 data will be ignored as it only includes the January date.
Taking a closer look at the monthly data during Covid-19, the Review Counts Per Month During Covid Chart shows the total number of review counts per month from January 2020 to January 2021. We can see that there is a sharp drop beginning March of almost 70% and recovered during the summertime but the numbers were still lower than before Covid-19 times.
2. Review Counts Vs. Covid-19 Cases
To find out the drop in the review count from section 1, the daily number of Covid-19 cases in the US is plotted against the daily number of review counts, and the respective health and security measures taken within each of these periods.
There is a sharp drop in review count or business activities started with the first lockdown. When businesses were forced to close, except for takeout, delivery, online order, or pickup. Then businesses recovered with the reopening and release of Covid-19 measures but the economy did not recover back to normal times. Then with the increase of Covid-19 cases after summer 2020, curfews with tightened measures were introduced but business activities only slightly reduced after then. People and businesses seem to adapt to this new Covid situation
Even though with the reopening of businesses and activities in summer 2020, the review counts did not return back to where it was before. This can be explained by 3 factors. Firstly, some business sectors or individual businesses did not survive with the first lockdown. Secondly, people are also more careful hanging out outside. Working or studying from home can reduce outside consumptions. For example, instead of eating outside during lunchtime, people will cook at home. Finally, since the majority of businesses on Yelp are restaurants, one of the most affected business sectors, looking at the overall business trend cannot provide an accurate view of how each business category is performing during Covid-19. As such, the next section will give further detail on individual business sectors.
3. Covid-19’s Impacts on Different Business Sectors:
3.1 Positive Impacts
The coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives, both in terms of the way we work, learn, and interact with others as social distancing guidelines have led to a more virtual existence, both personally and professionally. As a result, online events have merged with the pandemic. We can see from the Yelp dataset that the only category that faced a steep increase is Yelp Events, those events can be hosted online. An example can be seen in the picture below.
Another explanation for the sharp increase in the weekly moving average review counts in January 2021 might be related to the election. As we all know, many protests have been organized during Covid and with the US elections.
3.2 No Impacts or Slight Increase
Next, a few sectors have shown not impact during Covid-19. This includes basic and essential services such as groceries, food markets, financial services, and as people are staying home a lot more often mass media also become more popular.
3.3 Some Impacts But Back to Normal
Some business sectors were impacted by Covid-19, especially at the beginning, but then it has slowly recovered in the summer of 2020. These sectors are services that could be delayed for some time but will recover to the initial level after a few weeks. The categories listed in the chart could be considered as secondary essential services.
3.4 Impacts And Not Recovered to Initial Level
None essential services were especially affected by the first lockdown and even with the reopening during the summer season, the level of business activities has not recovered to the initial level. Those sectors have on average 30–40% drop in their business activities after recovery. People choose to eat at home and exercise outdoor more often than before.
3.5 Mostly Impacted
Sectors that are being hit the hardest by Covid-19 are Art & Entertainment, Bars, and Travels. Those sectors have over 50% reduced in business activities. With travel restrictions across countries and states, people tend to stay in their own city or use other transportation means. Bars and clubs are more affected than restaurants since people are there to enjoy the ambiance. As such, delivery or takeout happens less often. Arts & Entertainment would also require people to be on-site which is hard with social distancing.
4. Outlook
With all that being said, the Covid-19 pandemic has started at the end of 2019. Today, I am writing this article on June 13, 2021, which is 530 days or 1 year 5 months from the start of this pandemic. New variants with mixed government measures have led to 1, 2, and 3 waves, each one exceeding previous expectations (or maybe many others to come). Covid seems to be something that people become use to it.
Businesses need to adapt to this new normal condition by changing their current operating models and adapting to new technologies. Some other business sectors might simply disappear while others will emerge over time.
4.1 How are Businesses Adapting to Covid-19
Many Businesses have posted a Covid Banner and the most mentioned words are shown in the chart. We can see that businesses want to let customers know that they are open during Covid-19, and customers could order online, call, pick up in-store or using delivery methods.
Over here, we can see that all most 90% of stores offer takeout and 55% offer delivery. So businesses will still able to stay open even with lockdowns.
4.1 Future Considerations
- Different restaurants could also be affected in different ways. For example, restaurants that value good services and ambiance might be more affected than fast food.
- New attributes could be added in, letting customers know the safety measures that businesses are taken.
- Investigating how outdoor seating affects business activities.
