Surviving Amid Crisis Episodes

Abstract

The chapter examines how women-owned small businesses in Bangladesh responded to crisis episodes such as COVID-19 and discusses their resilience to shocking events. The study involved a qualitative exploration of three women-owned online small businesses conducted using the case study method. The cases included businesses that sold jewelry and fashion accessories, both imported and locally procured, and exclusively operated on social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. The findings suggest that the businesses adopted innovative social media strategies to survive the crisis episode, including page boosting and paid promotions, Facebook and Instagram Live coupled with sales and discount promotions, temporary closure, vendor switching, and product basket modification. The enterprises showed an overall moderate level of resilience, with a moderate level of adaptability, agility, and low flexibility with a high vulnerability to crisis events. Recommendations for policymakers and credit institutions are also discussed.

Unlocking the potential of women in a male dominated society: Key challenges and solutions in integrating women in digital economic activities

“…This is evident in the case of the COVID‐19 pandemic when many organizations, especially female owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs), were closed due to the lack of knowledge and skills on digital technology (Islam et al, 2021; Murshid & Murshid, 2022). According to Nandy and Biswas (2022) and Islam and Hoque (2022) if women with small businesses had better digital knowledge and skills, for example: going live on Facebook or other social networks to promote products, using digital payment wallets, taking online orders and processing deliveries over the online tracking systems, many of them would have been able to continue their business during the pandemic lockdown in Bangladesh (Dhar et al, 2022). Many female‐owned small businesses grew faster because they used social media, digital payment processes and delivery systems that allowed them to deliver the products to customers while maintaining social distancing during the lockdowns (Bijoy et al, 2022).…”