When a Buyer Made the Digital Task Urgent

For the Georgian firms that had not moved from interest to online selling, the demand experiment asked whether a concrete buyer could change the decision. This chapter follows the task the firms were asked to complete and interprets the result as evidence about urgency and expected value, not as proof that incentives automatically create durable growth. The crucial comparison is between an abstract possibility—perhaps selling online someday—and an order that would exist only if the firm made an online transaction possible within two weeks.

The offer turned “going online” into a specific job

The intervention was delivered between March and May 2022 by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers, or CRRC. Eligible firms were contacted by phone and told that CRRC wanted to order their goods or services, but that the purchase would have to be made online. The firm was not being paid simply for opening a profile. It had to make itself capable of receiving the order.

That condition created a sequence of tasks. Within two weeks, a firm had to establish an online business profile containing at least its name and logo, a description of its goods or services, product information with photographs or video, contact information for placing an order, and an option for review feedback. The requirements are revealing because they sit between a lesson and a completed sale. The firm had to present itself clearly enough for an outside buyer to find and understand it, then provide a route by which the buyer could act.

The payment and fulfillment rules made the route operational rather than merely cosmetic. Payment had to be made by bank transfer or directly through the website; there was no cash option. A firm selling goods had to deliver them to the CRRC offices in Tbilisi. For services, the transaction took the form of a voucher. These requirements added real coordination work, but they also gave the task a clear finish line. The question was not whether an owner felt more favorable toward e-commerce after the call. It was whether the firm could make a purchase possible under conditions resembling an actual order.

The two-week limit mattered for a related reason. A digital profile can be postponed indefinitely when its payoff is uncertain. A specific buyer with a deadline changes the timing of the decision. It concentrates several choices—what to display, how to accept payment, and how to fulfill the order—inside a defined period. In the paper’s framework, the deadline can act as a commitment device: it reduces the opportunity to defer the work while the prospective order supplies a reason to complete it.

This is what distinguishes the demand intervention from the earlier training offer. Training tried to lower the cost of learning and setting up a digital channel. The conditional order raised the immediate value of completing that work. It did not eliminate every technical or logistical requirement. Instead, it changed the payoff attached to meeting those requirements.