Impact of Digital Transformation on SME’s Marketing Performance: Role of Social Media and Market Turbulence

Abstract

Despite the rising relevance of digital transformation, there is still a knowledge vacuum since empirical research on Digital Transformation (DT) related topics is still scarce. This study aims to examine the impact of digital transformation on the marketing performance of small and medium, enterprises (SMEs). This research seeks to fill this void by adopting the Technology Adoption Model (TAM) in order to explore how in a fast-changing technological environment, digital transformation plays its role in firm specific capabilities that are imperative for a firm to adopt, and how they impact firm’s marketing performance. Combination of Convenience sampling as well as snowball sampling was used to collect the data. Reliability analysis, Normality analysis and multiple Regression Analysis approach was used to assess the conceptual framework utilizing survey data from 316 small to medium-sized enterprises in the twin cities (Islamabad & Rawalpindi), Pakistan. The results indicate that digital transformation has a positive impact on SMEs' marketing performance and encourage businesses to take advantage of the opportunity presented by new digital technologies and industry-wide digitalization trends by committing to adopting new technologies and improving their digital capabilities in order to increase their productivity, efficiency, and innovation as well as their marketing performance. Hence this study is a practical demonstration of how developing digital transformation may be used to develop novel digital products and services, and thereby improve marketing performance that leads to the overall corporate performance. Finally, the study adds to the body of knowledge by evaluating the proposed model that describes the relationships between digital transformation, social media marketing, market turbulence and marketing performance concurrently. This study is important as it helps managers to validate the allocation of resources towards technical infrastructure development in their firm operations. Ultimately, the policymakers will find it accommodating in order to develop suitable strategies for evolving human capital and to boost their absorptive.