A review of barriers facing social media usage among firms in less digitalized economies

Abstract

In contemporary business, social media has become pervasive, most importantly, for social networking, content sharing, and online transaction. Given its reliability, consistency, and prompt features, social media unlocks a wide range of avenues for businesses such as digital marketing. Interestingly, marketing (or advertising content) that occurs via social media is known as social media marketing (SMM). Undoubtedly, social media marketing has made it possible for businesses to reach their targeted consumers easily, effectively, and instantly. Besides that, extant literature has shown that SMM also faces several challenges regarding its usage and adaptability in the business environment. Hence, the essence of this article is to review some empirical findings from previous related works on challenges faced by firms in less digitalized economies. We reviewed thirty empirical articles from reputable scientific databases (WoS, Scopus, EHRIPLUS, EBSCO, Google Scholar, etc.) and found that; cost of internet accessibility, social media expertise, and marketing/identity risk were major barriers inhibiting the usage of social media firms in less digitalized economies, particularly in the African and Asian continents. The managerial contribution of this paper is that it would inform SME owners, Entrepreneurs, and other industry players to outline or know the identifiable challenges of social media usage in the business operation and how strategic decisions can be taken in its adoption/applicability particularly on SMEs in developing countries in the future. The limitations and future research directions are presented in the concluding part of the paper. © 2021, Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. All rights reserved.