Digital marketing and small and medium-sized enterprises’ business performance in emerging markets

Wisdom Apedo Deku, Jiuhe Wang and Alexander Kofi Preko

Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2024, vol. 18, issue 3, 251-269

Abstract: Purpose - This study aims to investigate the comprehensive conceptualization how digital marketing and its adoption increase the productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as the impact of technological orientation, customer relationship management and digital marketing on SMEs’ business performance in emerging markets (EMs). Design/methodology/approach - Anchored by social network theory, 178 SMEs were conveniently drawn from the National Board for Small Scale Industries now Ghana enterprise agencies in Ghana. The hypotheses were analysed using the SPSS package tool, and structural equation modelling was used, as well. Findings - This study reveals that the conceptualization and adoption of digital marketing positively affect the performance of SMEs’ business management in EMs. In addition, a positive moderating effect of dynamism is observed in the relationship between digital marketing and SMEs’ business performance. Research limitations/implications - This study focuses only on SMEs from the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions of Ghana as an EM, and it proposes priorities for future research streams in both developed and emerging countries. Practical implications - The findings encourage SMEs to develop quality digital marketing technologies, good customer relationships and technological orientation and customer relationship management competencies in EMs to maximise profit. Originality/value - This paper fills considerable knowledge, evidence and contextual gaps in the literature on SMEs, entrepreneurship and marketing in EMs by presenting a comprehensive overview of how SMEs can use digital marketing in an EM context to achieve the following: customer acquisitions, satisfaction and retention; increased profitability; quality service delivery; value creation; and cost reductions.

Keywords: Emerging markets; Digital marketing technologies; SMEs’ business performance; Customer relationship management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:apjiep:apjie-07-2022-0069

DOI: 10.1108/APJIE-07-2022-0069

Access Statistics for this article

Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship is currently edited by Xuhua Chang

More articles in Asia Pacific Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().