Online sales adoption and financial resilience in Sub-Sahara Africa: the moderating role of ownership and enterprise size during Covid-19 crisis

Joseph Ato Forson (), Samuel Gameli Gadzo (), Emmanuel Atta Anaman () and Abass Adams ()
Additional contact information
Joseph Ato Forson: University of Education, Winneba
Samuel Gameli Gadzo: University of Education, Winneba
Emmanuel Atta Anaman: University of Education, Winneba
Abass Adams: University of Education, Winneba

Future Business Journal, 2022, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract It is an established fact that the Covid-19 pandemic had a persistent economic uncertainty effect than health uncertainty. In this study, the researchers examined the effects of expanding sales online on the financial resilience of enterprises in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) during the economic downturn. The researchers measured financial resilience by the extent of sales and cash-flows decline during the pandemic. The researchers collected 4751 unweighted data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey and it Covid-19 follow-up survey. Findings from the bivariate probit model and the predictive margin probabilities showed that most enterprises in SSA adopted or expanded proportion of sales online during the pandemic. Increasing the proportion of online sales exerted a decreasing effect on sales and cash-flow declines and thus improved financial resilience at a threshold of 40% during the pandemic. Large enterprises were observed to be more resilient than small and medium enterprises, yet domestic and foreign enterprises had the same level of financial resilience during the pandemic. For enterprises in Africa to realise the 40% threshold of online sales, the researchers encourage enterprises to invest in advertisement for product legitimacy.

Keywords: Covid-19 pandemic; Enterprise size; Financial resilience; Online sales; Ownership type; Digital economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H12 L25 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s43093-022-00154-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:futbus:v:8:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1186_s43093-022-00154-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://fbj.springeropen.com/

DOI: 10.1186/s43093-022-00154-4

Access Statistics for this article

Future Business Journal is currently edited by Soad Kamel Rizk and Hayam Wahba

More articles in Future Business Journal from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().