Should firms leverage Social Media usage to enhance Supply Chain Efficiency? A Post Covid-19 Empirical Investigation

Abstract

With the unavoidable spread of post-covid-19 digitization across the globe, firms have started opting for social media usage to meet the emerging competitive business landscape. Accordingly, this paper intends to investigate the impact of social media usage on supply chain efficiency. Furthermore, it also aims to observe the mediating role of both quality and intensity of knowledge sharing between social media usage and supply chain efficiency. Structured, survey questionnaires along with a convenience sampling technique were used to collect data from 312 active social media users. Appropriate supply chain representatives which majorly includes manufacturers, retailers, and consumers were taken from the Fashion Industry of Pakistan. The overall result depicts that social media usage across the supply chain is significantly related to supply chain efficiency. Results also validate the mediating role of intensity and quality of knowledge sharing, for enhancing overall supply chain efficiency through social media usage. The findings assist supply chain channel members across industries of Pakistan in general, and the fashion retail industry in particular. The study clearly, propagates the integrated and multi-layered social media usage across supply chains, for anticipated SC efficiency and related performance outcomes.