Abstract
Research background: Because of the rapid improvements in advanced technological tools and widely usage of the Internet among the world, most of SMEs in various countries have become able to apply their marketing activities through online marketing and social media platforms that are less costly for them. Since SMEs encounter many financing constraints, these marketing options might be very beneficial for them to use for their marketing activities. However, socio-economic and cultural factors differ in each corner of the globe.
 Purpose of the article: This paper aims to investigate international differences between usage of online marketing and social media platforms by SMEs.
 Methods: The authors of this paper have selected 1156 Czech, Slovakian and Hungarian SMEs from Cribis database by employing random sampling method. An online questionnaire was directed by the researchers to have responses from managers and owners of SMEs. To find differences in selected variables, the researchers perform ANOVA analyses with Post-Hoc tests in SPSS statistical program.
 Findings & Value added: Regarding the size of businesses, Hungarian SMEs in both size categories: micro and small-medium sized, apply social media platforms in their operations more than Czech and Slovakian SMEs. When it comes to marketing activities, some similarities are in existence depending on size and age of SMEs. In detail, propensities of Slovakian and Hungarian older SMEs (that have been operating more than 10 years) and microenterprises to apply online marketing channels are higher than Czech older SMEs and Czech microenterprises. Corresponding to social media usage, Czech and Slovakian SMEs and older enterprises do not differ. But Hungarian SMEs and older Hungarian firms are more prone to apply social media channels than Czech and Slovakian SMEs and older Czech and Slovakian enterprises. This paper is a unique study that makes comparison between some Central European countries? SMEs that are in the Visegrad Group regarding their usage of their online marketing and social media tools. Thus, this paper also fulfills some gap in the marketing literature.
Highlights
SMEs are of prime importance to improve countries’ economic conditions, since they provide many contributions such as reducing unemployment rates and increasing value addition and income from exports
As already mentioned in methodology section, to investigate whether differences exist between Czech, Slovakian and Hungarian SMEs, ANOVA analyses had been performed by the researchers and the results regarding marketing activities and social media usage are presented in the Table 4
All p values are lower than 5% significance level and as illustrated in the column of Mean difference (I-J), the volumes for Hungarian SMEs are higher for marketing activities comparing with the values of Czech and Slovakian SMEs
Summary
SMEs are of prime importance to improve countries’ economic conditions, since they provide many contributions such as reducing unemployment rates and increasing value addition and income from exports. To overcome financing issues and barriers of growth, they look for alternative ways Under these circumstances, online-digital marketing and social media tools might provide them with new opportunities to reach more potential customers and to make more effective promotions for their products and services by making them face lower advertisement expenses comparing to traditional marketing channels. Online-digital marketing and social media tools might provide them with new opportunities to reach more potential customers and to make more effective promotions for their products and services by making them face lower advertisement expenses comparing to traditional marketing channels For these reasons, usage of digital marketing channels and social media tools enable SMEs to grow at lower costs. This paper focuses on online marketing activities and social media usage of SMEs
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