The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on globalization and digitalization in the non-food retail industry
Creators: name: Hug, David Michael
Publisher: name: ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften
Year: 2021
Subjects: 658.5: Produktionssteuerung

description: The megatrends of digitalization and globalization have shaped the retail industry during the last decades significantly. However, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019 has severely affected the global economy as interconnected value chains have been disrupted, and digitalization has become a sudden necessity due to lockdowns and travel bans. 
The aim of this master’s thesis was to identify the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on global upstream value chains as well digitization efforts in the European non-food retail industry. In addition, this thesis examined the potential future development of the retail value chains along the dimensions of globalization and digitalization within 10 years. The novelty of the pandemic made it a largely unresearched phenomenon. 
A comprehensive literature review has been conducted to provide a broad understanding of the subject. This review encompassed the retail industry, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the megatrends of digitalization and globalization. In addition, the digital business transformation matrix, Porter’s value chain, and a digital maturity model were introduced as frameworks for subsequent primary data collection. Subsequently, empirical research has been conducted through nine qualitative interviews with decision-makers from the European retail industry to answer the research questions. 
The thesis identified a fluctuation in demand, promotion of sustainability, disturbance of information flow in procurement, supply shortage, interruption of logistics flows, and saturation of distribution as impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on upstream value chain activities. Moreover, globalization depends largely on product category level criteria, and Covid-19 has led to further globalization of value chains. The pandemic’s impact on digitalization encompassed an acceleration of digitalization, shift of customer expectations towards digitalization, improved digital connectivity, moderate investments in digital infrastructure, high investments in digital competence, and strategic optimization. Moreover, a sustainable digital acceleration has been identified, and retail organization’s decision-making was considerably sped up. Lastly, all retail organizations greatly gravitate towards increasingly digitalized operating models. 
Overall, it was concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic has critically affected the retail industry, but the sector will eventually emerge strengthened from the crisis. Digitalization enables further globalization, and location advantages make specialized clusters inevitable sourcing partners. Globalization has not come to a halt due to Covid-19 but will increasingly be enabled by digital means. Retailers are recommended to embrace digital business models to remain competitive and to use the advantages of globalization. The results of this thesis are generally valid for the European retail industry, and further research is recommended to draw an analogy to the findings in 10 years.