Sustainable development of SMEs during the COVID-19 pandemic: a comparative study between developed and developing countries

This research compares and analyses the different innovation strategies employed by SMEs in both developing and developed countries to reveal their impact on firm performance and sustainable development during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test and a multivariate regression model were employed on two subsamples extracted from Saudi Arabia and France representing developing and developed countries, respectively. The results show that SMEs in France outperformed SMEs in Saudi Arabia during the pandemic period. French SMEs also have showed higher capacity to implement marketing, process, product, and organisational innovative strategies during the lockdown period. In addition, the results reveal that, during that period, marketing innovation practices have improved sustainability and financial performance of SMEs. Finally, the product innovation strategy was not well valued by customers during the pandemic period, which led to a decrease in the financial performance of SMEs in both developing and developed countries.