Harnessing social media business affordances for internationalisation : multiple case study of small and medium-sized enterprises

Abstract

This study examines how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) leverage social media affordances in their internationalisation pursuits. A multiple case study of eight SMEs representing business-to-business and business-to-consumer firms from Australia and Finland reveals that social media affordances are used for internationalisation pursuits via three core activities: 1) generation of market intelligence; 2) marketing communications; 3) relationship marketing. Furthermore, when conducting these activities, SMEs were found to employ either firm-centric or market-centric logic that led to the identification of six unique social media business affordances. The study contributes to theory by demonstrating how social media business affordances are harnessed for internationalisation and showing the implications of firm-centric and market-centric logics in the execution of social media activities.