Digital retailing practices for triggering physical retailers' bounce-back and bounce-forward performance against a great shock: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper investigates the impact of digital retailing practices on physical retailers' resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a difference-in-differences strategy with data from 50 Chinese listed retailers, the study examines the relationship between pre-shock digitalization (online-to-offline food delivery services (O2OFDS) and social media marketing services (SMMS), both on proprietary and third-party platforms) and two types of resilient performance: bounce-back (containing crises during the shock) and bounce-forward (adapting to long-term changes). The results show that while different digital retailing practices triggered bounce-forward performance, only those practices coincidentally aligning with temporary market structure changes triggered bounce-back performance. This highlights the individuality of specific digitalization practices in resilience evaluation.

Sirui Li, Jing Su, Ying Liu, Xianwei Shi, Jie Wang, Michael D. Lepech