Adoption of Social Media Marketing for Sustainable Business Growth of SMEs in Emerging Economies: The Moderating Role of Leadership Support

Abstract

Social media marketing (SMM) plays an important role in business communication, marketing, operations, and other activities. There is a growing interest among researchers, academicians, and practitioners to understand the role of SMM in business sustainability in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in an emerging economy, like India. Few studies have attempted to understand this role. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine the impact of adopting social media marketing for sustainable business growth of SMEs in an emerging economy. The study also investigates the moderating role of SME leadership support on the relationship between SMM usage and sustainable business growth of SMEs. After reviewing the existing literature and technology adoption model, a theoretical model is developed, which is then validated using a structural equation modeling technique to analyze 304 samples of Indian SMEs that use different social media marketing applications in their enterprises. This study confirmed that SMM tools significantly and positively improve the sustainable growth of SMEs in an emerging economy. Additionally, the study also found that SME leadership team plays a vital role in supporting actual usage of SMM tools that accelerate sustainable business growth of SMEs.

Social media perceptions, readiness and usage in fostering sustainable growth of micro and small enterprises in Uganda

“…Extant studies indicate that there is a relationship between social media usage and sustainable growth of businesses. As such, Chatterjee et al (2021) revealed that social media marketing tools have a significant positive association with sustainable growth of SMEs in India. Similar findings were reported by Patma et al (2021) who documented that social media marketing is positively linked with sustainability of SMEs in Indonesia.…”

“…(see Chatterjee et al, 2021;Scherer et al, 2019) have used TAM to explain technology adoption. The purpose of this model is to predict the readiness and usage of a tool or a certain technology and to identify the modifications which must be brought to the system in order to make it acceptable to users.…”

“…To mitigate the high failure rate, social media is recently acknowledged as a feasible strategy that business owner-managers can adopt to catalyze sustainable growth of MSEs (Chatterjee et al, 2021). Social media entails online platforms and applications that enable different parties to interact and share relevant information (Singh and Sinha, 2017).…”

“…However, less attention has been given to social media as a feasible strategy that can enhance sustainable growth of MSEs. In addition, Chatterjee et al (2021) investigated social media marketing tools generally in predicting sustainable growth of SMEs with less focus on antecedents such as social media perception, readiness and usage. The authors also recommended more studies to be conducted in other contexts.…”

Marketing Management in the Hotel Industry: A Systematic Literature Review by Using Text Mining

“…First, most studies were from before 2015 and few review articles on hotel marketing have been published during recent years [1][2][3], especially regarding the marketing tools that have undergone tremendous changes. For example, data-oriented marketing [6], digital marketing [7,8], social media marketing [9], online celebrity marketing [10], and sustainable marketing [11,12] have all emerged recently. It is necessary to conduct a comprehensive review of the development trends and marketing tools in hotel marketing in recent years.…”