alternative screening dates in each district and sent individual text message reminders the day prior to each screening. Each screening was followed by a facilitation session by a trained counselor who clarified any doubts and answered questions from the audience. The screening ended with a short feedback survey and payment of the show-up fee.

# **D.3 Implementation Assistance**

For implementation assistance, we trained a set of local facilitators ourselves based on the content of the handbook. These individuals were required to have a bachelor ́s degree in a related field and some experience interacting with businesses similar to those in our study. Most facilitators were fieldwork enumerators who expressed interest and had previous experience conducting business interviews, but were not the enumerators used to conduct surveys for this study. The training was conducted over three days and included classroom lectures, role play exercises, and pilot visits to retail businesses in districts external to the study. The 20 facilitators trained through this process were then randomly assigned to businesses in our study and were supervised by senior field staff.

The protocol for each shop visit was as follows. The facilitator first confirmed the identity of the business owner and then asked which aspects of the handbook needed clarification. Based on the owner’s response, the facilitator chose one of three options. First, if the entrepreneur had started implementing a practice but encountered problems along the way, the facilitator would document the issues and start giving standardized implementation advice. Second, if the entrepreneur had not started implementing any practice but had made progress reading the handbook, the facilitator would document any issues with the material and then give implementation advice. Once all issues were dealt with, the facilitator would encourage the entrepreneur to go through the rest of the chapter following the guidance. Third, if the entrepreneur had not even started reading the handbook, the facilitator would elicit their priorities among the practices and start introducing the chapter corresponding to the most relevant practice. Each shop visit lasted approximately 30 minutes. At the end of the first visit, the shop owner was asked to establish goals for the implementation of a practice covered during the visit and for the study of selected material. A second visit was scheduled two weeks after the first and at the convenience of the shop owner. This second visit followed the same protocol as the first with the difference that the starting point was determined by the work left from the first session and the entrepreneur’s priorities elicited during that visit.

There are several features that make these sessions unique. First, the assistance was provided on-site rather than in an outside venue, which allowed shop owners to tend to their business matters with only minor interruption. Second, the assistance sessions involved direct one-to-one interaction on topic areas that were elicited prior to each session. As a result, although the sessions were only 30 minutes each, they were intense in engagement and content. Finally, the sessions were led by trained facilitators who themselves came from similar backgrounds as the shop owners. Hence, the social distance between the assistance providers and receivers was quite small.

Appendix Table A1 uses data recorded by the facilitators to summarize several key features of these assistance sessions. First, on a descending scale of 1-5 (1=most interested; 5=least interested), shop owners on average expressed the most interest in learning about marketing practices, though the table shows considerable heterogeneity in interest across all practice areas of the handbook. Second, up to 47.5% of shop owners had already started reading a chapter and over 50% had tried to implement a suggested practice. Finally, up to 42.5% had encountered a problem in implementation, 10