The use of social media and e-commerce: a winning strategy for small businesses
University of Bologna, Italy
PROCEEDINGS of
North International Conference of Economics,
Issue 1 / 2016,
pp.114-124
ISSN 2537-317X
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.
