COVID-19 pandemic and manufacturing sector: An evaluation of coping strategies

Abstract

This study investigates the adoption and impact of coping strategies within the manufacturing sector in the context of pandemic disruptions. Utilizing the multinomial endogenous treatment effects model, we accounted for potential selection biases in our analysis of a comprehensive dataset comprising 29,443 Vietnamese manufacturing firms. The most prevalent coping strategy was the pursuit of new markets, adopted by approximately 27.9 percent of the firms surveyed. Notably, a significant proportion of firms had not yet implemented any coping strategies to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Our findings indicate a varied degree of effectiveness among the coping strategies in enhancing revenue outcomes. Strategies such as the promotion of e-commerce and the exploration of new output markets yielded positive impacts on firm performance, with increases of 7.82 percent and 0.16 percent, respectively. Conversely, other strategies demonstrated relatively lower effectiveness. This underscores the necessity for additional research to elucidate the role of government support programs and policies in facilitating the adoption of effective coping strategies (Huang et al., 2021), thereby enabling manufacturing firms to maintain operational resilience in the face of potential future disruptions.