Digital Marketing among SMEs within the B2B sector during Covid-19

Abstract

This research ought to understand how Swedish-based SMEs within the B2B sector have adopted digital marketing during the pandemic, and the factors that have served as enablers or barriers in the process. The findings identified three approaches taken by the SMEs, based on the enablers and/or barriers the companies faced in their efforts to adopt and utilize digital marketing, which were the following: an active approach towards implementing digital marketing activities, an exploratory approach where the SMEs aimed at transforming their marketing activities digitally and finally, a passive approach where minimum changes were made towards adopting digital marketing activities. Building on the framework by Taiminen and Karjaluoto (2015), barriers and enablers were used to empirically explore SMEs adoption of digital marketing. The findings indicate that knowledge and attitude as well as financial and human resources were the most significant factors. Companies who had these as enablers were more likely to adopt digital marketing, whereas the opposite was true for those who had these factors as barriers.