A multi-criteria based analytic framework for exploring the impact of Covid-19 on firm performance in emerging market

The recent pandemic has been the greatest catastrophic event in the last century that has left its irrevocable effect on the socio-economic and cultural environment. The current work presents a combined multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) framework of logarithmic percentage-change driven objective weighting (LOPCOW) and evaluation is based on distance from average solution (EDAS) method to enfold the early impact of COVID-19 on firm performance from fast moving consumer goods and consumer durables sectors in emerging market. Five aspects such as stock performance, dividend payout capability, sales and operational performance, financial stability and economic sustainability are considered for comparing 30 firms over seven consecutive financial years (FY 2013-14 to FY 2020-21). For aggregation of year wise rankings popular methods like Borda count and Copeland methods have been applied. A comparison of results of the LOPCOW-EDAS model with other MCDM methods has been made. It is noticed that the firms which held the overall top positions prior to COVID-19 suffer more afterward than the bottom performers. However, there has not been any major effect of COVID-19 on firms' financial health and long-term growth prospect. The result shows significant reliability and stability as revealed by the comparative ranking and sensitivity analysis. The proposed framework shall enable the organizations for detailed performance analysis. Some of the policy and managerial implications are also discussed.