Abstract

Involving and responding to customers and creating customer memorable experiences are of key concerns to owner/managers in establishing and developing customer relationships, entailed by shared value. Collaborating with customers is not only driven by a customer-centred business orientation but also by users’ initiation. Digital technologies play a key role in facilitating the collaboration, this is particularly true during Covid-19 pandemic in which the crisis resulted in disruptions and hence exceptional barriers to owners-managers in maintaining connected with customers. However, little research has been available to provide references to small businesses in the context, this research investigates those owned by women migrant entrepreneurs, the hard-reach minority groups in the UK constrained by limited access to resources, sustained the crisis using digital technologies. We’re interested in exploring how the small businesses survived the crisis the maintenance with customers, the key stakeholder group and how digital technologies played a key role in mitigating the negative effects on their business practices and value created through working with customers. We collected samples of self-employed African women entrepreneurs who were owner-managers of micro and small business in Aberdeen, UK underpinned, carried out in-depth interviews with sixteen respondents for looking into their life experiences. Employing thematic data analysis with the constant comparative methods, we enclose the findings by making sense of the lived experiences of the entrepreneurs.