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.
Highlights
IntroductionSmall and medium enterprises (SMEs) are found to act as important suppliers of semifinished and/or, in some cases, finished raw materials to large organizations and as such they are considered amongst the most vital organizational suppliers [1,2,3]
The results highlight that the impacts of Perceived ease of use (PEOU) on behavioral intention to use SMM (BIS) (H2a) and on Perceived usefulness (PU) (H2b) are both significant and positive, since the path coefficients are 0.29 and 0.26 with levels of significance as p < 0.001 (***) and p < 0.05 (*), respectively
The results show that impact of actual use of SMM (AUS) on sustainable growth (SSG) (H4) is significant and positive, as the concerned path coefficient is 0.51 with level of significance p < 0.001 (***)
Summary
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are found to act as important suppliers of semifinished and/or, in some cases, finished raw materials to large organizations and as such they are considered amongst the most vital organizational suppliers [1,2,3]. SMEs used to mainly operate in traditional markets; to date, they are interested in expanding their operations in emerging markets [6]. Despite their merits, SMEs across the world, and those operating (or attempting to operate) in emerging economies, often suffer from constraints in vital resources and have to deal with even less availability of technological applications
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