Inhibitors of social media as an innovative tool for advertising and marketing communication: evidence from SMES in a developing country

  • Received December 4, 2020;
    Accepted December 28, 2020;
    Published December 29, 2020
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/im.16(4).2020.15
  • Article Info
    Volume 16 2020, Issue #4, pp. 164-179
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Innovative marketing has given rise to practitioners’ and scholars’ attention in the 21st-century market. Given this, social media marketing has become the order of the day when accessing modern tools for marketing communication. However, the adoption of this innovation comes with its associated challenges, particularly, from a developing country perspective. Against this background, this study sought to examine the inhibitors characterized in the application of social media channels as an innovative tool for advertising and communication among SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in Ghana. For study results to be achieved, a quantitative research approach with a questionnaire of 650 was distributed among managerial staff of the fashion industry in the central part of Ghana of which 512 respondents were duly received and correctly filled for data processing and analysis. Results from the partial least square structural equation method (PLS-SEM), showed that despite the importance of innovation, lack of managerial skills/marketing expertise, perceived cost, regular systems/links upgrade, and financial constraints are significant inhibiting factors affecting the application of social media as advertising and communication tools among SMEs in developing economy. Interestingly, the findings further showed that ’company’s size’ as well as ’availability of social media channel/tool’ significantly control for the outcome variable (internet/social media) as a marketing communication tool.

Acknowledgment
This work is supported by Tomas Bata University in Zlin through; IGA/FaME/2019/002: The role of the institutional environment in fostering entrepreneurship, and further supported by IGA/FaME/2020/002 and IGA/FaME/2019/008. The authors are thankful to Prof. Jaroslav Belás, Prof. Boris Popesko, and Prof. Miloslava Chovancová for their guidance towards developing this manuscript.

 

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    • Figure 1. Conceptual framework.
    • Figure 2. Estimated model from ADANCO 2.0 version
    • Table 1. Demographic characteristics
    • Table 2. Measurement of сonstructs
    • Table 3. Construct reliability and validity
    • Table 4. Factor loading and variance inflation factor (VIF)
    • Table 5. Test of discriminant validity – Fornell-Larcker criterion
    • Table 6. Hypothetical path coefficient
    • Conceptualization
      John Amoah, Abdul Bashiru Jibril
    • Data curation
      John Amoah, Abdul Bashiru Jibril
    • Formal Analysis
      John Amoah, Abdul Bashiru Jibril
    • Investigation
      John Amoah, Abdul Bashiru Jibril
    • Methodology
      John Amoah, Abdul Bashiru Jibril
    • Project administration
      John Amoah
    • Supervision
      John Amoah
    • Validation
      John Amoah, Abdul Bashiru Jibril
    • Visualization
      John Amoah, Abdul Bashiru Jibril
    • Writing – original draft
      John Amoah, Abdul Bashiru Jibril
    • Writing – review & editing
      John Amoah, Abdul Bashiru Jibril
    • Software
      Abdul Bashiru Jibril