The article explores how digital technologies, under restrictions caused by the spread of Сovid-19, provide the foundation for boosting the competiveness of the network businesses, how the present circumstances force the network companies to reconsider their value proposition and experiment with their business models, thus strengthening the companies’ competiveness. The text draws on the empirical study of the relationship between the value proposition of chain restaurants and consumer demands in St. Petersburg. In order to identify the main selection criteria that potential consumers make, carried out was a semantic analysis of the findings as well as the semantic core clustering, multivariate analysis of variance MANOVA and analysis of variance ANOVA, which affect the value proposition formation. The results have shown that the use of digital technologies and e-commerce as electronic storefronts, sites and open access platforms, under conditions of Covid-19, mainly reflects the strategic and innovative motives of the network businesses. Value propositions, driven by social trends and big data assessment of consumer demand, has a positive effect on business performance. This approach allows standardizing the system of decision-making on identifying the company’s capacities to progress to a qualitatively higher level of online services system. The findings of the study might be of interest to managers and CEOs of companies, enabling them to better understand how consumers interact with the company in the digital space, which, in turn, impacts the components of the value proposition of the company and the ways it can forge the productivity of its business.
value proposition; restaurant market; dynamic content analysis; digital technology; Covid-19.