4th Industry Revolution Digital Marketing Adoption Challenges in SMEs and its Effect on Customer Responsiveness

Abstract

4th industrial revolution of cyber-physical technologies (4IR) intersecting digital technologies and entrepreneurship serves as an external stimulus in fostering a new method of venture creation transforming customers’ purchasing and consuming behavior. Large corporations are leading in leveraging on 4IR digital marketing for their marketing strategy but SMEs are lacking behind. This study explores the conundrum using an exploratory sequential mixed method. Semi-structured interviews were carried out on a sample selected using non-probability purposive sampling and determined through attaining thematic saturation of discursive patterns. Scale development for quantitative instruments performed using SPSS statistical software. A quantitative study was carried out on a sample size of 153 SME respondents. Analysis was undertaken by paired-sample T-test. Kuskal-Wallis H test and Spearman’s rho correlation test due to the nonparametric nature of data distribution. The outcome reveals that although SMEs are increasingly reliant on DM for their marketing strategy, most of these SMEs are only willing to invest in building low-level DM capability citing a lack of financial budget, inadequate technology infrastructure to support such setup, cyber security issues and lack of DM knowledge. Financial budget and technology infrastructure are considered the most critical concerns by SMEs with low and moderate DM adoption. However, these concerns are less pronounced in SMEs with high DM adoption. Finally, the weak but significant correlation between SMEs’ DM adoption and customer responsiveness infers the significant role of 4IR technology as an enabler of digital marketing strategy that also depends on other critical contributing factors such as price and quality