Title: SMEs' strategies for dealing with the COVID-19 emergency: a case study in the Italian food industry

Authors: Serena Strazzullo; Sara Pioggerella; Mark Anthony Camilleri; Ciro Troise; Aidin Salamzadeh

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P.le Tecchio 80, 80125, Naples, Italy ' Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, P.le Tecchio 80, 80125, Naples, Italy ' Department of Corporate Communication, University of Malta, MSD 2080, Malta ' Department of Management, University of Turin, Corso Unione Sovietica 218bis, 10134, Turin, Italy ' Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: The spread of COVID-19 has represented worldwide the biggest health emergency in recent years and has also caused extensive economic damage. It has pushed companies to reinvent themselves and adapt to new circumstances. This paper proposes an exploratory study to investigate the main resilience strategies and entrepreneurship ventures adopted by SMEs in the food industry to cope with the pandemic emergency. A survey was conducted through semi-structured interviews to collect data from 40 SMEs in Campania, an Italian region. A thematic analysis was then employed to analyse the data. Five major themes were identified, and each was addressed in turn, describing how often they come up, what they mean, and including examples from the data as evidence. The results show that most companies have undertaken innovative and digitisation strategies. On the other hand, the study revealed that few firms had adopted solely conservative strategies.

Keywords: COVID-19; food industry; pandemic; resilience; small and medium enterprises; SMEs; strategies.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2024.142442

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2024 Vol.53 No.4, pp.449 - 471

Received: 29 Jul 2022
Received in revised form: 01 Sep 2022
Accepted: 04 Sep 2022
Published online: 31 Oct 2024 *

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