Internet marketing benefits for South African SME owner-managers

Abstract

With the recent explosion of global marketing strategies, business enterprises have to contend with severe and escalating competition. To sustain competitiveness, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in South Africa should produce high-quality, customised goods and services efficiently. Adoption of Internet marketing technologies is fundamental towards meeting this challenge. However, the adoption and diffusion of technologies in marketing practices is the outcome of purposeful processes emanating from the realisation by SMEs that adoption of these technologies yields significant paybacks. The purpose of this study was to establish the managers' perceptions of the benefits of Internet marketing adoption in small and medium enterprises. Using a quantitative approach, a questionnaire was administered to owner-managers of small and medium enterprises in the Vaal Triangle in South Africa. A total of 269 questionnaires were completed, returned and considered useful for the survey. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and factor analysis in order to establish the factors considered to be the salient Internet marketing benefits. Four underlying factors were extracted namely: customer relationship building, information gathering, promotion and enhanced productivity. The mean scores indicated that information gathering was perceived as most important, but after sturdier tests for association were applied to the data set, customer relationship management demonstrated the most significant and positive correlation with SME productivity. As such, there is need for the small and medium enterprises to develop strategies to expand and sustain the identified benefits of Internet marketing.