The impact of E-marketing use on small business enterprises' marketing success

Abstract

Small business enterprises (SBEs) are considered to be the economic engine leading to worldwide economic development. They have attracted substantial consideration from researchers, academics and practitioners in the last three decades. Meanwhile, E-marketing (EM) has emerged as one of the key drivers in sustaining an organisation's competitive advantage. Yet, there is a lack of systematic empirical evidence regarding marketing activities that are affected by the use of EM in the (SBEs) context, and their consequent performance outcomes. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of EM use by SBEs on marketing success and to develop and test a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of EM use by SBEs. The conceptual framework consists of the following constructs: EM budget, EM tools, pre-sales activities, after-sales activities, marketing performance and marketing effectiveness. Moreover, 12 hypotheses were developed and tested. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to test the validity of measures, while structural equation modelling was used in hypotheses testing. Data were collected from 114 SBEs who had used different EM tools. Findings reveal that the use of EM tools has a positive influence on SBEs pre-sales activities, after-sales activities, marketing performance and marketing effectiveness. The results of this study have major implications for the marketing domain, as they stress the central role of marketing people in the successful implementation of EM in SBEs.