ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IN SME SECTOR PERFORMANCE

Social Media Marketing has played a pivotal role in the marketing strategy for SMEs. However, the impact on the business performance of SMEs is still not measured in Pakistan. Therefore, the study undertaken encompasses three main objectives; to ascertain the efficacy of social media marketing in SME sector business performance; to establish social media marketing is effective in creating customer response and to identify the impact of social media marketing in creating brand equity. The PLS-SEM modelling was used with a sample of 212 responses from the entrepreneurs of the restaurant industry, the modified structured questionnaire was used to collect the responses. The findings of direct impact show that social media marketing has a significant impact on brand equity, social media literacy on customer response, social media literacy on brand equity. Additionally, the direct impact of brand equity has a significant impact on customer response and a significant impact of customer response on business performance. The mediating impact of brand equity has a significant impact between social media marketing and customer response. Similarly, brand equity mediates between customer response and business performance. Finally, social media literacy has emerged as a strong predictor in the path analysis as it has a strong and significant impact on brand equity and customer response. This research has significant practical and managerial implications in the SME sector of restaurant businesses.