Enhancing social media competitiveness of small businesses: Insights from small pizzerias

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Abstract

Social media provide an online platform for enterprises to engage existing customers and attract new customers. Although social media can be easily set up at no cost, however, due to limited human and financial resources, many small businesses find it challenging to compete against large enterprises in social media use. While more and more small businesses have jumped on the bandwagon of social media in recent years, few studies investigated the social media strategies that can help small businesses to survive and even thrive against large competitors in the social media arena. Therefore, we studied 32 small pizzerias in a mid-size U.S. city in terms of their social media use for business. Our study found that small pizzerias emphasizing social media use on community relations and social responsibility tend to be more successful in attracting and engaging local customers. This study also sheds light on both effective strategies and successful practices of social media use by small pizzerias. The insights and recommendations identified from this study can help small businesses to enhance their social media competitiveness against large enterprises. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

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He, W., Wang, F. K., & Zha, S. (2014). Enhancing social media competitiveness of small businesses: Insights from small pizzerias. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 20(3), 225–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2014.889225

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