ABSTRACT

The core objective of the current study is to analyze the factors affecting the development of the small and medium enterprises (SMED) both before and after Covid-19 in Pakistan. The factors considered before Covid-19 are Marketing (MKT), Technology (TEC), Finance (FIN), Managerial Skills (MS), Government Support (GOV) and Education (EDU) while the factors after Covid-19 are Marketing, Technology, Finance, Managerial Skills, Government Support, Education, Supply (SUP), Income (INC) and Online Business (ONB). Primary data of before and after Covid-19 have been collected via questionnaire and for analysis the estimation technique of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) have been used. The findings of the study show that variables Marketing, Finance, Education and Managerial Skills have significant relationship before and after covid-19 while the variable Technology shows negatively significant relationship before Covid-19 and positively significant relationship after Covid-19. Moreover, Government Support shows negatively insignificant relationship before Covid-19 but shows positively significant relationship after Covid-19 with the development of small and medium enterprises. On the other hand, the after Covid-19 variables i.e. Income and Online Business show significant relationship but variable Supply shows insignificant relationship with the development of small and medium enterprises. The findings of the study show that there exist three key variables that are important for both before and after Covid-19 i.e. Finance, Technology and Marketing to affect the development of SMEs of Pakistan. Out of these three variables Finance is the most important factor to start the business, to run the business and for any kind of transactions. Marketing is another important variable because for selling new products it is very compulsory to provide details of goods and services to most of the people in the area so that they can purchase those products. The third most important factor is Technology. Use of technology can bring an increase in output in short time. As, in Covid-19 by using technology most of the SMEs continue their businesses but those who didn’t use technology because of no know how suffered from huge losses. So, technology is also one of the most important factor for the development of the small and medium enterprises.