Perish or Prosper? The Challenges and Opportunities for Rural Micro and Small Enterprises in the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis -The Role of E-Commerce

The raging COVID-19 pandemic in the past three years has had a great impact on people's health, life and work, as well as the business survival of enterprises and the overall social and economic stability. Rural MSEs are relatively short of capital and human resources, and it is more difficult for them to survive in the pandemic crisis. What difficulties and challenges did rural MSEs face during the pandemic? How did they respond and adapt? What role does E-commerce play in the survival of rural MSEs in the pande mic? These are the major questions this research seeks to understand. Qualitative research approach was applied to this study, in-depth interviews were conducted with semi-structured questionnaires, and content analysis was used to explore the possible answers to the research questions. It was found that during the most severe period of the pandemic, the most difficult challenges for agricultural MSEs in rural areas are: fearing that they and their employees will be infected and will affect their health and workforce (100
^%
), followed by concerning that government control measures such as social distancing and movement restrictions will affect business operations and sales income (91.67
^%
), followed by worrying about whether the cooperative logistics distributors can deliver online shopping goods to consumers as smoothly as before(75%). The coping actions taken by rural agricultural MSEs during the pandemic include: setting employee health management and work rules, conducting more sales activities on electronic platforms, developing new products based on customers' feedback. According to the findings, this study suggests that rural agricultural MSEs can make good use of electronic platforms to expand customer base, manage online customer relationships, promote high quality products during a crisis like COVID-19 pandemic. By doing so, MSEs can improve their E-business operation capabilities and accumulate better crisis resilience for the future.