Factors Affecting Digital Marketing Adoption in Pakistani Small and Medium Enterprises

Abstract

Background: A substantial portion of the world’s population owns and utilizes computers and mobile devices, contributing to the rapid expansion of digital advertising. Marketers swiftly recognized the communicative benefits of social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Considering the importance of social media platforms and digital modes of marketing, it is considered especially significant for small firms to integrate these platforms into their business strategies in order to improve performance. Methods: Based on this aim, this study collected data from 363 owners/managers of SMEs in Pakistan. Structural equation modeling is used to check the hypothesized model of the study. Results: The results show that compatibility, owner/manager support, employee IT skills, financial cost, government policies, and social influence significantly affect adoption of digital marketing by SMEs in Pakistan. Conclusions: Furthermore, digital marketing also positively affects SME performance. This paper discusses the study’s findings as well as managerial and academic implications, including its limitations and future research avenues.

Small retail businesses' social media adoption amid a crisis

“…He et al, 2017;Kwon et al, 2021;Ullah et al, 2023) and environmental factors, such as government policies and competitor and customer pressure (e.g. Mataruka and Muzurura, 2023;Shaltoni, 2017;Ullah et al, 2023), have been investigated as potential predictors of small businesses' social media adoption or effectiveness. In addition, diverse theories explaining innovation adoption processes, such as technology-organization-environment framework (Wang et al, 2016), resource-based view theory (Peteraf, 1993), technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989), unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (Venkatesh et al, 2003), as well as DIT (Rogers, 2003), have been frequently applied to investigate small businesses' social media adoption.…”

“…Ainin et al, 2015;Chatterjee and Kar, 2020;Odoom et al, 2017), organizational or managerial factors, such as employee skills, business purpose and openness (e.g. He et al, 2017;Kwon et al, 2021;Ullah et al, 2023) and environmental factors, such as government policies and competitor and customer pressure (e.g. Mataruka and Muzurura, 2023;Shaltoni, 2017;Ullah et al, 2023), have been investigated as potential predictors of small businesses' social media adoption or effectiveness.…”

“…, 2023) and environmental factors, such as government policies and competitor and customer pressure (e.g. Mataruka and Muzurura, 2023; Shaltoni, 2017; Ullah et al. , 2023), have been investigated as potential predictors of small businesses’ social media adoption or effectiveness.…”

“…, 2017; Kwon et al. , 2021; Ullah et al. , 2023) and environmental factors, such as government policies and competitor and customer pressure (e.g.…”

Factors Affecting the Adoption of Digital Marketing in Non-Profit Organizations: An Empirical Study

“…The TOE framework has been applied in studies on general information systems (IS) in organizations, specific IT/IS adoption, and, more recently, social media adoption in organizations, which is technically similar to digital marketing, the subject of this study (e.g., AlSharji et al 2018;Ali Qalati et al 2021). In addition, the TOE framework has also been actively used as a theoretical framework in recent studies of digital marketing adoption in various organizations (Sharma and Sharma 2023;Ullah et al 2023;Patil et al 2022). In particular, Ullah et al (2023) argued that the TOE framework is particularly useful for examining the factors that influence an organization's adoption of new technologies in a study related to SMEs' adoption of digital marketing.…”