Page 14 - IMDR EBOOK 20 OCT 2020

"Pandemic and Beyond: Naviga ng the New Normal" E - Book Year 2020

The earlier SARS epidemic showed us that factors such as production, sourcing of
supplies, sources of competitive advantage and quality are greatly affected due to an
epidemic. In a globalised marketplace, large multinationals as well as Indian
companies with global operations and markets source materials and have
manufacturing bases across the world to reduce costs and/or achieve competitive
advantage. Epidemics have a disruptive effect on supply chains. In the trade-off
between risks and costs most rms will veer towards the low cost alternative to give
them a competitive advantage. When this location/supplier is hit by the pandemic the
supply chain comes to a standstill.

Sales of products, costs of doing business and relationships with stakeholders undergo
considerable change during a pandemic. In sectors such as hospitality and
entertainment where face to face interactions are the norm social distancing and the
lockdown have meant that business has come to a standstill. Even management
companies have reported loss of business to the tune of INR 3,000 crores in the past few
weeks.

The objectives of the study were twofold:
1. To investigate the impact of COVID 19 across industry sectors; and
2. To investigate perceptions about the future (July 2020 and beyond).

2. Methodology
The study was exploratory in nature. Given the lockdown all over the country, data
was collected through a questionnaire administered through Google forms.
Respondents were given a list of questions of as follows:
1. Has COVID-19 had a positive or negative impact on your business operations?
2. What challenges has your organization experienced as the result of COVID-19?

3. How has COVID-19 impacted sales for your product and/or service?
4. How has COVID-19 impacted costs of doing business?
5. How has COVID-19 changed the way you interact with customers and other
stakeholders?
6. What will be the future impact of COVID-19 - next 6 months to 1 year - on your
business operations?
Questions 3-6 were open-ended questions.

Data was collected over a period of 10 days from 22nd April, 2020 to 1st May, 2020. The
questionnaire, titled ‘BRACE-2020: Business Response Assessment in the COVID-19
Era’ was shared via email, WhatsApp and through LinkedIn.

An inductive categorisation method was used to code the perceptual, qualitative data
and draw inferences.

3. Sample
The data was collected by the researcher herself without the use of any third party
investigators. Therefore ease of access was a primary concern. Moreover, given that
respondents had to share qualitative data about their business operations, building
trust was important. This would be easier if respondents were known personally to the
researcher. Therefore the researcher decided that a convenience sample would be both
practical as well as effective.

A total of 50 valid responses were collected.
The researcher believed that perception about impact of COVID-19 would vary across
industry sectors. Therefore the sample adequately represents various industry sectors
as depicted in Table 1:

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