Details of Research Outputs

Social media has become a major channel for firms' marketing communications. Yet studies on the impact of social media marketing (SMM) have been limited to a few large firms. Motivated by the lack of understanding of the effectiveness of SMM for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this study investigates the impact of online SMEs' SMM messages on their sales performance through customer engagement. Fixed-effects regression analyses on weekly data from 288 online SMEs from the fashion retailing industry in China indicate that both customer endorsement and promotion information SMM messages positively influence customer engagement in the form of likes, shares, and comments. Additionally, customer engagement behaviors (likes and shares) lead to increased sales performance only if the SMEs verified their identity (a trust cue) with the social networking services and online e-commerce platform providers. Overall, the findings of this study highlight the crucial role of trust in SMEs' SMM activities.