Social Media Marketing Strategies Used by Small Retail Businesses

Customer Engagement
SMM is a strategy that might improve products and services, therefore business 
leaders must effectively use social media to engage customers (Constantinides, 2014).
Customer engagement strategies included making the customer feel like an important part 
of the company (Moreno-Munoz et al., 2016). Effective customer engagement increased 
brand loyalty and was critical for business survival (Dessart, Veloutsou, & Morgan-
Thomas, 2015; Hibbler-Britt & Sussan, 2015). Cole (2015) posited that acknowledging 
customer feedback created customer satisfaction and might lead to developing new 
products. Chakravarty, Kumar, and Grewal (2014) found that 80% of small businesses 

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relied on the customer satisfaction and purchasing experience. Satisfied customers were 
more likely to view a company positively, spread word-of-mouth content, and repeat 
business transactions with the company (Chen & Chen, 2014). Lee et al. (2014) and 
Dijkmans, Kerkhof, and Beukeboom (2015) discovered a positive relationship between 
social media customer engagement, increased sales, return-on-investment, profitability, 
perceived reputation, and customer retention. Active customer engagement decreases the 
impact negative events could have on an organization’s reputation (McCann & Barlow, 
2015). Kajalo and Lindblom (2015) discovered that direct, close contact with customers 
enabled small businesses to be more flexible in improving market position.
Customer engagement strategies are a major concern for marketers. Customer’s 
perspectives and the value of communication is a focal point for marketers (Rad, 
Ghorabi, Rafiee, & Rad, 2015). Fang, Xiaoling, Minue, and Palmatier (2015) found that 
interested customers were more likely to click advertising links, which increased traffic 
and other business-related activities. An increase of interest in consumer communities 
occurred when consumers actively exchanged product and service information (Dessart et 
al., 2015). Word-of-mouth, electronic word-of-mouth activities, blogging, and writing 
product or service reviews are examples of customer engagement behaviors.