An examination of SME social media use in the food industry

ABSTRACT

This article explores the impact that social media campaigns can have on benefitting small and medium-sized consumer-oriented enterprises in reaching both existing customers and potential new customers. Despite the inherent attraction associated with social media, many SMEs lack the resources, knowledge and time to carry out an effective social media engagement strategy. There is also a fear that poor engagement with social media may cause more harm than good to the organization. By engaging with a small owner-operated bakery in a major city in New Zealand the researchers demonstrated how similar organizations effectively utilized social media, created an actionable and easily understood social media strategy for the host organization and then aided in the implementation of that strategy. The results from the study outline key dimensions to social media use that enable a better understanding of the dialogue used to generate consumer engagement online.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media
• online consumer engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Huibert Peter de Vries http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4420-8650

Ekant Veer http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2260-7869