Does intensive social network management lead to positive effects in quality practices?

Abstract

There are many studies that have analysed the effects of quality use on financial improvement. Nevertheless, the bibliography examining the incidence of the combined use of intensive social network strategies and practices of quality management in business is limited. This gap is even more evident when we focus on the service sector and, specifically, on the subsectors in which small, highly competitive, often changing, and high-failure-rate businesses predominate. By analysing 211 surveys administered to travel agency managers in Spain and using structural equation modelling, it is concluded that quality management practices have a direct and significant impact on business performance and on the financial performance of these organisations, in accordance with the existing literature. Nevertheless, significant differences are observed when the sample is segmented by businesses that use social networks intensively and those that do not. This article suggests that betting on strategies of intense social network use enhances the positive results of quality management policies and may lead small service companies to obtain the competitive advantage that means the difference between failure and survival in sectors with high rates of competition that evolve very rapidly.