The adoption of technological solutions in response to the Sars-CoV-2 Pandemic: a multi-firm case study analysis on the Food&Beverage industry

Abstract

The Sars-CoV-2 is a model of coronavirus that originated in China in late 2019 and that caused unprecedented disruption in almost each aspect of human life. World's economy was not spared, as the combined action of direct (e.g. workers catching the virus and being forced home) and indirect (e.g. forced closures and lockdowns imposed by government to address the virus) effects caused millions of firms to declare bankruptcy and several more to struggle to stay in business. Despite the fact that a small minority of companies managed to thrive during the pandemic and to increase their revenues, the aforementioned crisis appear to be the rule for most firms. To remain in the market, many firms were forced to change their way of carrying out business and to adopt a variety of strategies whose effectiveness was not certain at all. Amid these strategies, the one regarding digital transformation or the adoption of new technologies seemed to be particularly effective, especially because they allowed employees to continue working remotely and customers to shift towards digital channels. The aim of this paper is to confirm these assumption in regard to the Food and Beverage Industry, both by analysing existing literature and by inquiring firms directly. The Food and Beverage Industry is one of the most important industries both in term of its share of global GDP and for very survival of human society. Furthermore, while the effects of the virus are easily identifiable in some industries, the effects on the F&B industry are mixed and harder to identify. This paper will be organized as follows. The first part will describe the Food and Beverage Industry and its importance in global economy. The second part will analyse the effects of the novel coronavirus both on the economy in general and in the F&B Industry. The third part will analyze the existing literature in regard to digital transformation and to its effects applied to the crisis originated by the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic. The fourth and last part will contain the results of the interviews conducted on leading firms of the Food and Beverage industry, with the aim to confirm the previous parts and to infer a possible solution for firms to mitigate the negative effects of the virus.