Abstract
This study evaluates the impact of e-commerce platform adoption on the survival and financial resilience of retail micro-small and medium enterprises (micro-SMEs) in Vietnam. Utilizing a longitudinal dataset of 1,204 retail firms surveyed between 2018 and 2022, we employ a difference-in-differences (DiD) estimation strategy to address endogeneity and self-selection bias. Our treatment group comprises micro-SMEs that adopted e-commerce platforms (such as Shopee, Lazada, or Tiki) during the COVID-19 pandemic shock of 2020, while the control group consists of non-adopting traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. The empirical results demonstrate that e-commerce adoption significantly increases the probability of firm survival by 14.8 percentage points over a two-year horizon. Furthermore, the positive treatment effect is highly pronounced among female-owned enterprises and those operating in urban centers, highlighting the role of digital integration in mitigating localized economic shocks and structural gender barriers. Robustness checks, including parallel trends verification and placebo tests, validate our primary findings. The study provides critical policy implications for digital transformation initiatives, suggesting that targeted subsidies and digital literacy training for micro-retailers are vital levers for inclusive economic recovery in emerging Southeast Asian economies.
