Social Media Marketing Strategies Used by Small Retail Businesses

User-generated content.
Consumers create user-generated content by writing 
online reviews of products or services that are visible to anyone who visits the website 
(Zhou & Wang, 2014). User-generated content was the main source of information 
passed to businesses and consumers (Yu, Duan, & Cao, 2013). User-generated content 
influenced consumer-purchase behavior (Weathers, Swain, & Grover, 2015). Consumers 
created user-generated content by writing online reviews of products or services that were 
visible to anyone who visited the website (Zhou & Wang, 2014). Sales of products and 
services increased by 58% and 41%, respectively when consumers wrote reviews or 
made recommendations to friends using social media (Forbes & Vespoli, 2013). SMM 
and the understanding of user-generated content are still in the early stages, and managers 
do not know how to exploit the benefits of each (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014).
Branding.
Brands have increased their presence on social media sites such as 
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which enabled consumers to drive the conversation 
and communicate with brands in real-time (De Vries & Carlson, 2014). Brand marketing 
can be expensive; however, social media offered a low-cost solution for small businesses 
with limited marketing budgets (Herman, 2015). Social media platforms facilitated 
communication between consumers and businesses; increased company and brand 
recognition, customer engagement, event promotion; and allowed brands to share product 
information (Nobre & Silva, 2014; Patil & Puri, 2015). Firms that engaged customers 
through social media pages may be more likely to influence customers’ purchase 

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behavior (Kumar et al., 2016). Habibi, Laroche, and Richard (2014) discovered that 
positive relationships between consumers and brands, products, companies, and among 
other consumers increased brand trust and loyalty. Interacting with brand pages 
encouraged employees and consumers to share interesting information and positive 
experiences about products (Patil & Puri, 2015). Consumer interaction influenced brand 
loyalty by the cocreation value, social value, and frequency of use with brand pages (De 
Vries & Carlson, 2014; Zheng, Cheung, Lee, & Liang, 2015). Business practices of 
addressing consumers’ concerns helped to build brand or company equity, brand 
recognition, and brand loyalty, which might lead to increased business value and 
survivability (Fan & Gordon, 2014).