The Executives

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find out the coping mechanism of small business owners during Covid-19, a basis of designing a business strategy model to cope with the negative impact of Covid-19. In this study, there were 161 business owners participated from different industries such as service, merchandising and manufacturing. The response of the business owners to the different coping strategies that were categorized as Financial Management Coping Strategy, Operational Management Coping Strategy, and Expenses Management Coping Strategy has been evaluated. Furthermore, the level of the coping strategy per nature of business, form of business, number of employees, tenure of the business, and ownership of the store were examined. Finally, the perceived effectiveness of these coping mechanism as per balancing expenses, cash flow, financial stability, business continuity and payables were evaluated. The hypothesis about the difference in coping strategies on the different nature of the business, form of the business, number of employees, tenure of the business and the ownership of the store were also validated.

Keywords: Coping mechanisms; small business owners; Covid-19; business strategy model.