Sustainable Competitiveness in the Case of SMEs—Opportunities Provided by Social Media in an International Comparison

Abstract

In the extremely competitive business environment typical of the 20th century, small and medium-sized enterprises have had to face countless challenges. As time progressed, digitization and the development of information and communication technology has had increasing impacts on the lives of both individuals and businesses. Now, from an organizational point of view, social media has become a corporate strategic tool the significant role of which is indisputable. The relevance of our study can be found in the fact that social media is now one of the most popular solutions if the goal of a business is to reach a specific target audience, to receive feedback about products/services, and to initiate the immediate communication that contributes to the loyalty of consumers and customers in the long term, as well as to take advantage of cost-effective advertising opportunities. The primary goal of our research is to provide the reader with a comprehensive picture of the thinking in the SME sector regarding the corporate application of social media. In our study, following a comprehensive literature review related to the topic, we use primary data collection to examine small and medium-sized enterprises operating in Hungary and Slovakia. The reason for choosing the subjects of the research is that, taking into account the territorial size of the regions under investigation, similar districts were selected, and the regions have similar numbers of businesses engaged in economic activity. The investigation process covers two regions in the two selected countries, examining a total of 1114 enterprises. Before starting our research, two hypotheses were defined. In order to test the correctness of the hypotheses, we performed statistical analyses using the SPSS program, specifically the Mantel–Haenszel test and the chi-square test. Considering the results, the hypotheses formulated by the authors proved to be correct in the case of both countries. As a result, it can be stated that the success of traditional marketing tools used before the online space greatly influences the extent to which businesses feel their presence in social media is important.