By: Amy Musgrave
Electronic marketing can help SMEs grow and compete with bigger businesses that have more money, but new research shows that SMEs in the Vaal Triangle, Gauteng, are not very interested in transacting or marketing their goods online.
Management academics Theodore Bagwell and Paulson Kellerman interviewed 123 SMEs in the Vaal Triangle for their research, published this week in the Acta Commercii management journal.
“Over the years SMEs have struggled to compete on some sort of equal footing with larger organisations and with the advent of technology and the growth in the use of e-marketing, the playing field is becoming more equal,” wrote Bagwell and Kellerman.
However, the SMEs they interviewed lacked the confidence to market their businesses online themselves, and said they did “not possess the necessary staff skills required for the complete implementation of e-marketing”. They added that the they had never been offered any e-marketing training.
Over two-thirds of the SMEs said paying for online advertising would be too expensive for their businesses, and 29% felt that e-marketing would be a security threat to their companies. Some of the respondents did not believe that genuine online markets existed where they could sell their goods and services.
“The lack of skills, training, advice, and adequate research has led many SMEs to fail to adopt e-marketing tools,” the authors found.
“So little training was available for them that some did not even believe that e-marketing could add any value to their businesses at all, viewing it “as a mere catchphrase.”
The authors recommended that e-marketing training for SMEs be rolled out and that a few enterprises get started and set an example to others.
“Many companies have adopted a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude toward the adoption of e-marketing strategies in the SME industry in South Africa. As soon as successful champions emerge (innovators), many companies will be able seriously to consider participation,” said Bagwell and Kellerman.
SMEs should also learn how to buy and sell goods online if they wanted to make the most of e-marketing their goods and services.
Organisations supporting SMEs should set up regional awareness and training for these businesses in their areas, the researchers suggested.
“A systematic implementation of e-marketing strategies is positively related to overall business success and SMEs who do fail to implement these systems are set to jeopardise the potential returns of their businesses,” they concluded.
