Effectiveness of social media platforms for product marketing in southwestern Nigeria: a firm-level analysis

Abstract

The development of social media has provided a paradigm shift in the way firms communicate with their customers, suppliers, competitors and other external sources. Much more as it relates to getting inputs, recommendations and feedbacks on their products. Despite these windows of benefits provided by social media, little is known about its effective use among SMEs, especially in the context of firms in developing countries like Nigeria. This paper thus examined firm-level analysis of the effectiveness of social media platforms in Southwestern Nigeria. The study focused on firms that are into servicing and sales of consumer technology and clothing. Data were collected through the administration of structured questionnaire with a sample of 400 respondents. The findings showed that there were positive and significant correlation between average total sales and increased revenue (r = 0.226, ρ<0.05), sales increase (r = 0.291, ρ<0.05), increases customers (r = 0.200, ρ <0.05) and product feedbacks (r = 0.121, ρ<0.01). Based on the result, firm’s deployment of social media platforms for product marketing activities had positive impact on sales performance. The result further showed that educational background of the CEO/manager is key as it impacts the extent to which manager’s use the social media technology to promote firms presence online as well as to market their products. The research also found that customer loyalty could gain via the social web platforms. This was as revealed by the average followership received by the businesses online. It is therefore imperative for business aspiring to grow their market share on their products to leverage on the available social media tool, especially Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for competitiveness within the business space.

Keywords: Social media platforms, Firms, Product marketing, Effectiveness, Total sales