The Use of Social Media and E-Commerce: a Winning Strategy for Small Businesses

Domenico Consoli ()
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Domenico Consoli: University of Bologna, Italy

North Economic Review, 2017, vol. 1, issue 1, 109-119

Abstract: Nowadays we live in a global market era. For small business (SBs), that do not have financial and human resources to sell in a big market, the use of e-commerce platforms and social media to promote products/services can be a winning and competitive strategy. The electronic platform and social media can reinforce the weaknesses of an absence of a commercial network to interact with end customers especially if they live in another country. In the global world, companies to sell products/services must exchange information with all stakeholders like suppliers, enterprises, partners, and mainly with customers. By social media, between customers, business partners and companies a bidirectional channel is established and a process of co-creation and co-production, to improve products/services and customer satisfaction, is stimulated. For SBs the reduced availability of resources is not an impediment to sell in a global market. Owners of SBs can directly spend and devote part of their free time to support the online sale. SBs being lean and flexible enterprises can execute more quickly orders, collected by the website, and therefore the distribution process is faster. In this paper we analysed a sample of small enterprises to analyse if entrepreneurs/managers of SBs believe in the strategic potential of these tools.

Keywords: small businesses; e-commerce; social media; Web 2.0; global market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M15 M21 M31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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