How the impact of COVID-19 on Swiss companies is measured
- Swiss Economy
- KOF Bulletin
The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures being taken by the government to mitigate its health consequences are affecting many companies in Switzerland. In order to obtain a timely and comprehensive overview of this impact, Swiss companies’ websites are regularly checked for the use of relevant terms, and these findings are then broken down by company size, sector and location.
This study aims to measure the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Swiss companies and has two main objectives. Firstly, it plans to achieve the greatest possible coverage of the Swiss economy and, secondly, the survey will be updated weekly. This is hardly feasible using conventional survey methods, which is why ‘web scraping’ is used.
The survey assesses this impact on firms by recording the extent to which the term ‘coronavirus’ or synonyms are used on the websites of around 50,000 Swiss companies. This says nothing about the nature of the impact, i.e. whether these companies are affected positively or negatively. However, the indicator shows that firms’ propensity to provide information about coronavirus on their websites varies significantly by sector and company size. Over time the aggregates reveal whether the impact defined in this way changes.
Impact broken down by company size
Chart G 4 shows the extent to which firms are affected by COVID-19 and how this impact varies according to company size. The beginning of the observation period reveals an increase in the level of impact for all company sizes, and this effect is more pronounced in the case of larger companies. Towards the end of the observation period, all company sizes reveal a certain stagnation compared with previous weeks. The propensity for firms to provide information about coronavirus on their websites correlates strongly with the size of these companies.
Impact broken down by sector
Chart G 5 shows the extent to which firms have been affected and how this impact varies from sector to sector. Initially, a sharp increase in communication about changes in the pandemic can be observed in all sectors, which slightly weakens or stagnates towards the end of the observation period. The fluctuations over the last few weeks are fairly small. However, some sectors reveal an increase – for example, in pharmaceuticals and especially telecommunications – while a modest decline can be seen in the retail sector in particular.
Given the current status of research, the indicator does not yet enable any general statements to be made about the type of impact. It is, however, obvious that the pharmaceutical industry, for example, tends to provide positive information about the adaptation of research activities in this area, whereas the hospitality sector tends to communicate about problems in a more negative way.
Impact broken down by canton
The so-called ‘heartbeat’ indicator is used to examine the impact broken down by canton. This is an activity value that reflects the frequency and extent of changes (updates) made by the owner of a website. The indicator has been developed by Dataprovider.com and is updated monthly.
Chart G 6 shows the proportion of company websites with a high or extremely high degree of updating (‘heartbeat’), which indicates coronavirus impact. It is clear that companies in western Switzerland (with the exception of Fribourg) were relatively severely affected in mid-April. This could be related to higher infection rates and/or the different sectoral structures in the cantons of western Switzerland. Here too, however, more in-depth analysis is needed to better understand these differences.
The values for the individual cantons and their performance over time as well as an international comparison are shown on the website external pagehttps://kof-inno.shinyapps.io/corona/.
Contact
KOF Konjunkturforschungsstelle
Leonhardstrasse 21
8092
Zürich
Switzerland