Enablers and Inhibitors of Social Media Usage Towards SMEs’ Growth: Evidence from Service- Based SMEs in Ghana

The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) has propelled many to focus on interconnectivity and automation while leveraging real-time data for effective decision-making and becoming competitive. This trend has been observed among small and medium enterprises (SMEs), particularly in emerging economies where their contribution to the national Gross Domestic product has been pronounced. This development is apparent among SMEs in both developed and developing countries that have contributed substantially to job creation and other economic indicators. On the hind side, fortifying this growth has been challenging given the need to meet the changing demand of consumers. In pursuit of this, innovative marketing strategies are available to SMEs to meet consumers' demands and become competitive. Nonetheless, social media marketing has become an emerging trend for marketing communication and continuous customer interaction. Even though the affordances of social media adoption towards the growth of businesses transcend political and economic jurisdiction, literature on the subject matter has been apparent among developed economies. More importantly, these studies are mostly concentrated on the impact of social media on customers’ intention to patronize a firm’s product or service. Ostensibly, the adoption of social media for marketing and advertising goes a long way to draw the attention of prospective customers to a brand (or a company's product/service). However, within a less digitized economy like Ghana, Internet marketing orientation among SMEs is faced with some operational challenges that have a potency to hinder the firm's sustainability and growth. Against this background, the thesis sought to fill in the missing gap by developing a comprehensive research model to examine the enablers and inhibitors of social media application as a marketing communication tool for SMEs' growth among micro-to-medium enterprises in Ghana. Leveraging the uses and gratification and the social media engagement theories, the study explicates the enablers and inhibitors of social media to the growth of SMEs in Ghana. The enablers and inhibitors are described as the operational benefits and challenges respectively. In this thesis, the researcher introduced two new constructs (business motivation and SME growth). The study employs a mixed (qualitative and quantitative) method approach to execute the objectives set. The researcher, therefore, made use of quantitative data analysis through Partial least square and structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) particularly ADANCO version 2.2.1 software as the main statistical technique and used experts and consultative interviews to draw a meaningful conclusion for the qualitative approach. The findings of the study would offer maximum contributions to theory, practice (beneficial to managers/owners of SMEs), governments, and academics on the usage of social media for a sustainable SME.

ISBN:	978-80-7678-153-5
EAN:	9788076781535
Počet stran	48 stran
Datum vydání	10. 03. 2023
Pořadí vydání	První
Jazyk	anglický
Vazba	e-kniha - pdf
Autor:	John Amoah
Nakladatelství	Univerzita Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně
Tématická skupina	999 - nezařazeno
	Neprodejná publikace. Publikaci je možné poptávat zde: Volně dostupné na http://hdl.handle.net/10563/52427