IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijbire/v13y2017i2p255-269.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of social media adoption on competitive advantage in the small and medium enterprises

Author

Listed:
  • Anas A. Al Bakri

Abstract

Internet-based social media delivers huge benefits to SMEs. There is, however, little research into whether SMEs in Gulf Cooperation Council states use it to gain competitive advantage. This study investigated the relationships between internet-based social media and competitive advantage in SMEs in the travel, restaurants and hotels sector in the area, using structural equation modelling and confirmatory factor analysis. It drew on a sample of 2,000 SME owners and directors across six countries. The results showed no significant relationships between social media use and competitive advantage. Only 10% of the SMEs were using social media. Of these, 72% used Facebook, 27% Twitter and 1% YouTube. All said social media had improved customer service and relationships, and 80% said it had improved products and service. Uncertainty in how to apply social media, measure the return on investment and persuade employees to embrace social media was the main challenges.

Suggested Citation

  • Anas A. Al Bakri, 2017. "The impact of social media adoption on competitive advantage in the small and medium enterprises," International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 13(2), pages 255-269.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijbire:v:13:y:2017:i:2:p:255-269
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=83542
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Beier, Michael & Früh, Sebastian, 2020. "Nutzung von Social Media Plattformen durch Schweizer KMU - Eigene Profile und erzielte Reichweiten," EconStor Research Reports 224773, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    2. Zu, Xu & Diao, Xinyi & Meng, Zhiyi, 2019. "The impact of social media input intensity on firm performance: Evidence from Sina Weibo," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 536(C).
    3. Sikandar Ali Qalati & Dragana Ostic & Mohammad Ali Bait Ali Sulaiman & Aamir Ali Gopang & Asadullah Khan, 2022. "Social Media and SMEs’ Performance in Developing Countries: Effects of Technological-Organizational-Environmental Factors on the Adoption of Social Media," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(2), pages 21582440221, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijbire:v:13:y:2017:i:2:p:255-269. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=203 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.