Since the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have faced unprecedented challenges when trying to remain open. Because COVID-19 spreads through aerosolized droplets, businesses were forced to distance their services; in some cases, distancing may have involved moving business services online. In this work, we explore digitization strategies used by small businesses that remained open during the pandemic, and survey/interview small businesses owners to understand preliminary challenges associated with moving online. Furthermore, we analyze payments from 400K businesses across Japan, Australia, United States, Great Britain, and Canada. Following initial government interventions, we observe (at minimum for each country) a 47% increase in digitizing businesses compared to pre-pandemic levels, with about 80% of surveyed businesses digitizing in under a week. From both our quantitative models and our surveys/interviews, we find that businesses rapidly digitized at the start of the pandemic in preparation of future uncertainty. We also conduct a case-study of initial digitization in the United States, examining finer relationships between specific government interventions, business sectors, political orientation, and resulting digitization shifts. Finally, we discuss the implications of rapid & widespread digitization for small businesses in the context of usability challenges and interpersonal interactions, while highlighting potential shifts in pre-existing social norms.
翻译:自COVID-19大流行以来,企业在试图保持开放时面临着前所未有的挑战。由于COVID-19在气溶胶小滴中扩散,企业被迫将服务距离拉远;在某些情况下,分流可能涉及将商业服务转移到网上。在这项工作中,我们探索了在大流行病期间仍然开放的小企业使用的数字化战略,调查/询问小企业业主了解与在线移动有关的初步挑战。此外,我们分析了日本、澳大利亚、美国、英国和加拿大各地400K企业的付款情况。在政府初步干预之后,我们观察到(每个国家至少)数字化企业比广度前的水平增加了47%,大约80%的被调查企业在一周内数字化。从我们的定量模型和调查/访谈中,我们发现企业在大流行病开始时迅速数字化,为未来的不确定性做准备。我们还对美国最初的数字化进行了案例研究,审视了具体政府干预、商业部门、政治导向和随之产生的数字化变化之间的细微关系。最后,我们讨论了快速和广泛的数字化对小企业的影响,同时强调了在社会互动性和潜在关系中,同时强调了在社会互动性背景下的快速和广泛数字化对小型企业的影响。