Table 3 Impact of two business strategies on operation performance of individual merchants coping with COVID-19.

From: COVID-19 containment policies, digitalization and sustainable development goals: evidence from Alibaba’s administrative data

Dependent variable

ln(number of orders)

ln(net GMV)

ln(average net GMV per order)

The ratio of subsidies to GMV

ln(number of SKUs)

 

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

Panel A

     

Business strategy 1: chain store

     

Dummy of a chain store*Wuhan’s lockdown

0.042***

0.073***

0.024***

−0.004***

0.041***

 

(0.005)

(0.006)

(0.002)

(0.001)

(0.002)

Dummy of a chain store*post Wuhan’s lockdown

0.113***

0.123***

0.004***

0.001***

0.061***

 

(0.003)

(0.004)

(0.001)

(0.000)

(0.001)

Shop characteristics

     

Shop rating score

0.127***

0.163***

0.005***

0.003***

0.007***

 

(0.001)

(0.001)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

ln(shop age (weeks))

−0.077***

−0.067***

0.006***

−0.017***

0.031***

 

(0.001)

(0.001)

(0.000)

(0.000)

(0.000)

ln(number of chains in a district)

0.045***

0.053***

0.003*

0.004***

0.012***

 

(0.004)

(0.005)

(0.001)

(0.001)

(0.001)

Dummy of a chain store

0.032***

0.027***

0.004***

0.007***

−0.025***

 

(0.006)

(0.007)

(0.002)

(0.001)

(0.002)

Robustness check for business strategy 1: chain store

     

ln(number of chains in a district)*Wuhan’s lockdown

0.045***

0.074***

0.029***

−0.001**

0.035***

 

(0.005)

(0.006)

(0.002)

(0.001)

(0.002)

ln(number of chains in a district)*post-Wuhan’s lockdown

0.091***

0.101***

0.008***

0.002***

0.045***

 

(0.003)

(0.003)

(0.001)

(0.000)

(0.001)

Panel B

     

Business strategy 2: multi-app store

     

Dummy of a multi-app store*Wuhan’s lockdown

0.083***

0.097***

0.016***

0.007***

0.020***

 

(0.005)

(0.006)

(0.002)

(0.001)

(0.002)

Dummy of a multi-app store*post Wuhan’s lockdown

0.118***

0.129***

0.005***

0.003***

0.055***

 

(0.003)

(0.003)

(0.001)

(0.001)

(0.001)

Shop fixed effects

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

District-week fixed effects

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Observations

≥1,000,000

  1. Standard errors are in parentheses. ***, ** and * represent significant at the 1%, 5% and 10% levels, respectively. Observations are at the shop-week level. Control variables include shop characteristics and the same-side network effects measured by the logarithm of the number of shops in a city-district.
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