The nexus between e-commerce adoption in a health pandemic and firm performance: The role of pandemic response strategies

This paper takes the initial step in exploring how pandemic response strategies interact with other enablers of e-commerce adoption in the logistics sector and also determines their effect on firm performance. Drawing on a rich data pool from selected Nigerian logistics firms in the global logistics value chains, the interrelationships between the pandemic response strategies and other e-commerce adoption enablers were obtained using an intuitionistic-based decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (IF-DEMATEL). A robust ranking of these was determined using multi-objective optimization based on ratio analysis plus full multiplicative form (MUL-TIMOORA). Then, the effect of the e-commerce adoption enablers on firm performance and the mediating role of pandemic response strategies on this relationship were determined using simple additive weighting (SAW). The results indicate that technical related enablers are the highest ranked followed by pandemic response strategies and suggest that e-commerce adoption in a health pandemic is strongly linked with financial and operational benefits. Specifically, the technical enablers have the highest effect on delivery time while pandemic response strategies have the highest effect on profit and customer satisfaction. Moreover, pandemic response strategies partially mediate the relationship between other e-commerce adoption enablers and firm performance. Hence, this study provides significant constructs that enrich the literature on IT adoption in a health pandemic for the increased competitiveness of global value chains.