COVID-19 and SME Adoption of Social Media in Developing Economies in Africa

COVID-19 and SME Adoption of Social Media in Developing Economies in Africa

Ranson Sifiso Gwala, Pfano Mashau
Copyright: © 2023 |Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-6684-5770-2.ch008
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Abstract

This chapter explores how COVID-19 negatively impacted society and small-medium enterprises (SMEs) and how social media marketing, promoting, and influencing played a role in rescuing and resuscitating some of the SMEs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter investigates the use of social media during the hard lockdown due to mitigation measures of COVID-19. It uses a desktop review of literature to qualitatively identify themes. The study aim was to understand how social media could be used by SMEs to improve and grow SMEs. The study identified five key themes during COVID-19, being social media adoption, employees layoffs, falling customer demand, government support, and online business adoption. The social media influencing is being adopted as part of social media marketing, and one of its positives is that it is affordable. The richness of data and literature could lead to the development of a conceptual framework for the use of social media by SMEs in Africa.
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Background And The Study Focus

The emergence of covid-19 brought devastation that is yet to be fully accounted for. Many people lost their lives. Corporations and small, and medium, enterprises, (SMEs) lost their valuable income and were forced to retrench a sizeable number of their workforce. The worst was when some SMEs could no longer meet the bottom line and were forced out of business. The repercussions were dire for both business owners and employees. However, some SMEs were able to survive, learn, adapt and find new ways of doing business under covid-19. As part of small business survival, these SMEs had to adapt and innovate. At the centre of such innovation and adaptation was the adoption of the fourth industrial revolution. The fourth industrial revolution has been around for just over a decade, yet its impact continues to be felt depending on country, organisation and affordability factors.

Social media adoption has been growing in leaps and bounds. However, many organisations have chosen to use less of these social media platforms like websites and Facebook. Platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter have not been effectively used to market businesses. However, during the covid-19, social media adoption by SMEs grew (Patma et al., 2021, Kakumbi and Phiri, 2022). The objectives are as follows:

  • a)

    how the outbreak of COVID-19 affected and influenced SME social media adoption, and,

  • b)

    implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the adoption, and use of social media in developing economies in Africa.

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The Literature Review

The literature review shall use two models of technology adoption, these are technology, Organisation and Environment model (TOE) and Technology Adoption Model (TAM). Scanning the emergence of covid-19 and how it impacted the SME sector. Further probing how this led to the adoption of technology in the form of social media marketing and other forms brought by the present era of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). The study utilises the Technology Adoption Model (TAM) as the main theoretical framework.

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