engleski

The comparison of social media usage in Croatian and UK SME companies

The presence of social media as a “user-generated communication” and the recent rapid growth of their usage, change the tools and the strategies companies usage as a marketing tool. Michaelidoua, N. et al., 2011., investigated how and why B2B SMEs in UK use social media and what are the differences between organizations from different industries. Berthon (2012.) proposed that the social media usage vary across different countries and their types and how they are used will be determined by technology, culture and government. Russell, 2009., has emphasized the need for new and creative metrics suitable for social media environment to assess SMEs` branding efforts in that specific environment. Based on researches mentioned above the goals of this paper were to determine the level of social media usage in top SME Croatian companies and to compare them with results gathered for UK SME companies. In order to do that we used similar methodology and metrics as Michaelidoua, N. et al., 2011. in their paper. The underlying assumptions are that successful companies extensively use all available channels to communicate with customers whether B2B or B2C companies. Danis, 2011. supported the argument that social networks are more important for new business activity in emerging than in developed economies. Findings show the difference in social media usage in two different countries. Merging the metrics for B2B and B2C top SME companies it was obtained a new perspective in relations of social media usage and SMEs` success.

Social media; SME; B2B; B2C; Internet marketing

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