The impact of digitalization on promoting business during crisis: evidence from Armenian SMEs

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the factors that affect the attitudes of Armenian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) regarding digitalization, examining whether they view it as a tool to foster innovation and business growth, while also assessing the extent to which digitalization mitigated the negative impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. Design/methodology/approach The empirical approach is based on data collected from 452 Armenian SMEs, which were further analyzed using SPSS Statistics 23.0 software. Scales for assessing the COVID-19 impact, innovation and digitalization were constructed and validated. To test five hypotheses, binomial logistic regression was conducted to appraise the importance of digitalization for Armenian SMEs, including the ability to mitigate the consequences of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Findings The results of the analysis showed that the economic sector plays a significant role in forming the expectations of firms on the positive impact of digitalization, while the company size does not affect them. This paper found that the provision of online services before the pandemic did not help Armenian SMEs to be less affected by the crisis. Furthermore, the perception of whether digitalization facilitated innovative processes, products and services did not depend on the degree of being affected by COVID-19. Finally, the findings indicate that the more agile companies which had the ability to convert their business model into an e-business model were less affected by the crisis. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature by studying the effect of digitalization on SMEs, as well as how SMEs in small developing countries like Armenia mitigated the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The current work is unique as, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no prior empirical studies focusing on impact of digitalization and innovation induced by exogenous shocks in an under-researched country like Armenia.