How does the adoption of digital payment technologies influence unorganized retailers’ performance? An investigation in an emerging market

Consolidating Unorganised Retail Businesses through Digital Platforms: Implications for Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals

“…Overcoming inherent business inefficiencies by consolidating business operations results in improved economic performance of the UR businesses, transforms livelihoods of the UR business owners and creates local level pathways for the realisation of the UN SDGs [13]. With this framework, we reconcile the literature between sustainable business model innovation [1,3,6,8] and transformative models of innovation in emerging economies [11,14], emphasising that digitisation enables UR businesses to circumvent chronic resource shortages that improve business performance, which in turn leads to further socio-economic transformation. This is important because the research highlights that local level pathways in resource constrained emerging market environments can 'level-up' development to attain the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) [13] without waiting on necessary governmental intervention for resource availability.…”

“…However, Sharmelly and Ray [22] also point out the challenges of economic sustenance (financial gains) for firms producing low cost and affordable products for subsistence consumers. Recent studies [6,7] highlight how the adoption of card-based, app-based payment options [6] and M-wallets, as well as account-based technologies [7], offer tech-enabled solutions for UR firms to overcome some of the challenges highlighted by Sharmelly and Ray [22]. Mortazavi et al [11] offer a broader 'inclusive innovation' perspective, calling for the partnership between local entrepreneurs and governments, which helps firms cope with technological and economic changes in resource constrained contexts.…”

“…Adhikary et al [6] and Kumar et al [7] provide an in-depth insight into the economic gains realised by UR businesses from the adoption of app-based digital payment solutions during their interaction with stakeholders and customers. In their review of UR businesses in emerging markets, Gupta and Ramachandran [8] highlight the scope for improving efficiencies in backend operations which largely rely on manual records of credit and instore inventory, traditional supply chain methods and a lack of websites or online services.…”

“…Recent literature [1,5] has explored the role of technological interventions in business consolidation. There is also burgeoning literature [6,7] exploring the impact of app-based technological intervention in improving the economic performance of UR firms in emerging markets. Within this context, Gupta and Ramachandran [8] highlight the scope for exploring how technological intervention can improve efficiencies in UR business operations reliant largely on traditional supply chains, manual records of credit and in-store inventory and lack websites or online services.…”

“…The majority of the existing research on sustainable business model innovation has studied business model design in relatively mature and stable institutional environments with sufficient infrastructure and access to resources [10]. In contrast, the literature on sustainable business model evolution at the base of pyramid, which is characterised by chronic resource and infrastructural constraints, has very few studies focusing on the economic [6,7] and social transformation [11] resulting from technological intervention. To address this gap in the literature, we posed the following research questions: (1) How can digitisation enable UR businesses to consolidate their business operations and improve overall economic performance and (2) how can the digitisation of UR businesses enable inclusive and transformative sustainable business model innovation at the base of the pyramid?…”