Author(s): June Ann J. Casimiro and Leilani I. De Guzman
Micro, Small, and Medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have the majority contributions to the Philippine economy, although they are prone to risk during an economic crisis like what the COVID-19 pandemic brought. This study focused on the retailing decisions of MSMEs, which are clustered into merchandise management and store management. With the pandemic’s impact,only the firm with effective adaptation to environmental changes will thrive, according to the Theory of Natural Selection. However, there are only limited studies in terms of analyzing what the MSMEs do in carrying out retail decisions in two different scenarios – pre-COVID-19 versus during COVID-19. This study's main objective is to describe MSMEs' retailing decisions. The researcher used a descriptive approach aided by quantitative techniques. A total of 174 respondents from the top municipality with registered MSMEs participated in this research. This study found that MSMEs are now shifting from brick-and-mortar to brick-and-click operations at the onset of a pandemic. However, generally speaking, there is not enough evidence to say that merchandise and store management change when the pandemic hits the country. Nevertheless, a number of ways in performing these decisions have been developed and improved. Also, MSMEs' perception of the importance of merchandise and store management strategies significantly changed. This led to the proposal of the retail decisions model, which might help contribute to the body of knowledge of marketing and in business in general.