Evidence | Mastercard Strive

Outcomes and impacts on small businesses

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Mastercard Strive Small Business Evidence Map

The Mastercard Strive Small Business Evidence Map is an interactive tool that charts the impact of digital and data-first support on small businesses. It showcases context-specific strategies effective in supporting small business growth.

Evidence-based, digital support for small businesses

Engaging with the Evidence Map revealed five key insights:

1. Digital has a positive impact on small businesses.

Overwhelmingly, digital has positive impacts on small businesses, and those that cannot or do not embrace digital are falling behind. This digital divide is often wider for Indigenous, rural, youth, and/or women-led businesses. Programs that are not designed to address this divide run the risk of exacerbating it.

2. Digital upskilling is most impactful when bundled with other forms of support and focused on customer acquisition

Impacts of training and mentoring programs are often short-term, but these strategies are most effective when targeting skills related to customer acquisition. Furthermore, bundling upskilling with access to digital financial services and/or digital business tools enables business owners to put new skills to use right away.

3. Digital markets increase efficiency and allow for growth.

Social commerce and e-commerce markets allow small businesses to do more—reach more customers, conduct more transactions, and sell a wider variety of products and services—in the same amount of time. Digital market participation has been strongly associated with improved resilience and growth for small businesses in recent years.

4. Digital financial services (DFS) facilitate adoption of new better business practices across the board.

DFS are a gateway to the adoption of better business practices by small businesses which lead to resilience and growth. Access to credit and payments systems in particular are an important component of many impactful initiatives.

5. “Low-stakes” digital tools are widely used and can be a catalyst for deeper digitalization.

Email and social media are widely used by small businesses and have positive impacts on marketing skills and customer engagement. These can be an important catalyst for using more complex digital tools, which are linked to long-term impacts.

By regularly analyzing the Evidence Map database, we extract new insights and lessons that address specific inquiries. This process enables us to continually enhance our ability to deliver impactful programs. Read more about our key insights and emerging findings in our blogs below.

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HOW TO

Using the Evidence Map

The Mastercard Strive Small Business Evidence Map contains data from over 140 studies mapped across four digital support categories, 27 interventions, product or service types, and 7 outcome categories. As an interactive tool, users can scan for evidence on specific interventions, in regions of interest, deploying various methodologies.

How to use the Evidence Map

The Mastercard Strive Small Business Evidence Map offers two views for users:

1. Study Map: The Study Map visualizes the number of studies found on digital interventions for small businesses plotted against the outcomes they examined.

2. Results Map: The Results Map visualizes the results of each test that was conducted on a particular outcome. The number in the circle represents the number of tests conducted on that outcome, with green indicating a positive impact, red indicating a negative impact, and yellow indicating no impact.

Note that most studies tested more than one outcome, and many studies tested more than one variation on that outcome. For example, a study that tested the outcome of “business growth” may have provided results on 1) increased profits or revenue, 2) increased sales volumes, 3) increased number of customers, and 4) expansion into new sectors, markets, products, and/or service lines. Thus the number of tests in the results view may not equal the number of studies.

Filters: Users can apply filters to gain a more precise understanding of the impact of digital interventions on different outcomes.

Additional information: Clicking on any circle provides further information and links to the respective studies. A supporting methodology document is available upon request, which includes definitions and descriptions of the outcomes assessed.

Updates

The Evidence Map was last updated in , using literature assessed up to September 2024.

We are currently tracking several impact studies that are in progress or that were released after the literature review ended. These will be folded into the next version of the Evidence Map.

If you have questions about the Evidence Map, would like to discuss research priorities, or have relevant impact studies that you would like us to include, please contact hello@strivecommunity.org.