THE EXTENT SOCIAL MEDIA USE BY SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN THAILAND

Abstract

          Social media is no longer a trend for marketers, it becomes reality. Social media is a crucial channel for customer support. It has been recognized as the most potentially powerful medium. Social media is introduced as a new tool that provides the benefits of the Internet. The social media will continue to extend that lead by delivering compelling business and enterprise mobile management information solutions. Therefore, businesses are facing the question how seriously should business people and marketers think about social media effects in business practices? Hence, this paper is an early attempt aims to provide empirical data on the extent of use social media by small and mediumenterprises in Thailand. The research aims to explore the extent of usage of the social media in each platform by small and medium enterprises in Thailand. What is the most important social media applications used in each type of small and medium enterprises in Thailand? And what are the key objectives of the social media used in Thai small and medium enterprises? Data is analyzed by mean, standard deviation, ranking, percentage, and frequency. The result shows that the extent of social media usage in Thailand is 64.6% to adopt social media and used in their works, while 35.4% are non-social media adopters.