A case study on strategies to deal with the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic in the food and beverage industry

By Md. Tarek Chowdhury, A. Sarkar, Sanjoy Kumar Paul, Md. Abdul Moktadir. Operations Management Research, 2020

246 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This research investigates the impacts of the novel coronavirus disease, also referred to as COVID-19 pandemic, on the food and beverage industry. It examines both short-term and medium-to-long-term impacts of the pandemic and outlines strategies to reduce the potential consequences of those impacts. To this end, we use a qualitative, multiple-case-study methodology, collecting data from eight sample companies with fourteen respondents in the food and beverage industry in Bangladesh. The findings show that the short-term impacts of this pandemic, such as product expiry, shortage of working capital, and limited operations of distributors, are severe, while the medium-to-long-term impacts promise to be complex and uncertain. In the longer term, various performance metrics, such as return on investment by the firms, the contribution of the firms to the gross domestic product (GDP), and employee size, are all expected to decrease. Moreover, firms may need to restructure their supply chain and build relationships with new distributors and trade partners. The study proposes several strategies that managers in this sector can adopt to improve resiliency in the changing environment during and after the COVID-19 era. While this research is novel and contributes to both theory and practice, it does not consider small and medium-sized companies in the food and beverage industry. Therefore, the impacts and strategies we identify may not apply to smaller companies.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/07a719ea65f1e3f04159594275971451fb62b6e0

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In Economics and Econometrics

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Citations in the corpus

Innovative Finance, Technological Adaptation and SMEs Sustainability: The Mediating Role of Government Support during COVID-19 Pandemic (2021, background): “[73] Bangladesh strategies Results suggest that short-term implications such as product expiration, funding shortages, and distributor operations are severe.”
Supply Chain Viability and the COVID-19 pandemic: a conceptual and formal generalisation of four major adaptation strategies (2021, methodology): “In addition, Chowdhury et al. (2020) used a case study methodology to articulate some common features among pandemicrelated adaptation strategies.”