Social Media Marketing Strategies Used by Small Retail Businesses

Participants in this study are business owners and community leaders in the 
SATX region. I intend to deliver a final copy of my approved study to each participant.
Participants have permission from me to share this study on their social media sites or 
any community business forum. Future researchers will have access to my study via the 
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database and any other person who wishes to have a 
copy of this study may email me a written request.
Recommendations for Further Research 
Further exploration in the area of SMM might be necessary based on the 
information, results, and findings of this study. The SMM strategies documented in this 
research may apply to other small businesses outside of the retail industry. Internet 
technologies, social media platforms, marketing techniques, SMM, and customer 
engagement strategies are evolving every day, which leaves future researchers many 
opportunities to expand research on how to use SMM strategies to engage customers.
Other avenues for further research might be using actionable metrics for social media 

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effectiveness and measurement. For example, research exists to show the potential 
benefits of using SMM; however, there is an insufficient amount of literature related to 
using specific metrics to determine exactly how social media enhanced business 
performance (Paniagua & Sapena, 2014). Future researchers may want to use metrics, 
such as Google Analytics, to measure how social media enhanced business performance.
There were three limitations in this study that could be improved upon in future 
research. The limitations of the study were: (a) the target population was small business 
retailers, (b) the geographical location was specific to the SAT region, (c) and the small 
population size of five small business retailers. The results of this study were unique to 
the small business leaders in the retail industry and might not be transferable across other 
industries, indicative of issues experienced in other regions in the United States and the 
rest of the world, representative of all retail businesses in SATX, or detail every small 
business retailer’s experiences. Opportunities for future research could include focusing 
on small businesses in other industries, expanding the geographical location, or 
expanding the sample size to enhance the study results.