Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences

- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences


Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Business and Policy Studies

Series Vol. 12 , 13 September 2023


Open Access | Article

Digital Marketing Transformation of China’s SMEs in the Post-epidemic Era: Crisis, Trends and Strategies

Xijin Xu * 1
1 The University of British Columbia

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences, Vol. 12, 126-133
Published 13 September 2023. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by EWA Publishing
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Citation Xijin Xu. Digital Marketing Transformation of China’s SMEs in the Post-epidemic Era: Crisis, Trends and Strategies. AEMPS (2023) Vol. 12: 126-133. DOI: 10.54254/2754-1169/12/20230610.

Abstract

The influence of the coronavirus pandemic on China is complicated. A great deal of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are struggling economically. As a substantial amount of customer demand transfers online, people are beginning to see the hidden economic opportunities brought by the epidemic. In the post-epidemic period, digital initiatives have helped small and medium-sized enterprises adapt to the shifting market conditions, recover, and succeed. The use of digital technology has emerged as an essential component of SME growth strategies, and the deployment of digital marketing represents the initial step in their digital transformation process. SMEs contribute significantly to the growth of the national economy, the alleviation of employment-related stress, and the promotion of social stability. Based on the existing research, this study will focus on the impact of the epidemic on the operation of China’s SMEs and the difficulties and demands faced by them. This paper will investigate the new potential for China’s SMEs to contribute to the growth of the digital economy using digital marketing as an entrance point. This study aims to help SMEs discover potential opportunities in the complex environment; nonetheless, they should still adopt the most appropriate strategies for their particular circumstances.

Keywords

SME, digital marketing, digital transformation, pandemic, Internet

References

1. Holzmann, A., & Kärnfelt, M. (2020). Supporting China’s SMEs affected by covid-19 is crucial to avoid a socioeconomic disaster. https://merics.org/en/analysis/supporting-chinas-smes-affected-covid-19-crucial-avoid-socioeconomic-disaster [2022-9-17]

2. Ma, J. (2021). Explainer | China’s SMEs: How important are small firms to the economy, and what challenges are they facing? https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3155660/chinas-smes-how-important-are-small-firms-economy-and-what [2022-9-17]

3. Ma, Y. (2021). China: Likelihood to go offline shopping as often post covid-19 restrictions 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1272100/china-likelihood-to-go-offline-shopping-as-often-post-covid-19-restrictions/ [2022-9-17]

4. Ma, Z., Liu, Y., & Gao, Y. (2021). Research on the impact of covid-19 on Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises: Evidence from Beijing. Plos one, 16(12), e0257036.

5. Kannan, P. K. (2017). Digital marketing: A framework, review and research agenda. International journal of research in marketing, 34(1), 22-45.

6. Veleva, S. S., & Tsvetanova, A. I. (2020). Characteristics of the digital marketing advantages and disadvantages. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 940, No. 1, p. 012065). IOP Publishing.

7. Shankar, V., Grewal, D., Sunder, S., Fossen, B., Peters, K., & Agarwal, A. (2021). Digital marketing communication in global marketplaces: A review of extant research, future directions, and potential approaches. International Journal of research in Marketing.

8. Minculete, G., & Olar, P. (2018). Approaches to the modern concept of digital marketing. In International conference Knowledge-based organization (Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 63-69).

9. Dwivedi, Y. K., Ismagilova, E., Hughes, D. L., Carlson, J., Filieri, R., Jacobson, J., ... & Wang, Y. (2021). Setting the future of digital and social media marketing research: Perspectives and research propositions. International Journal of Information Management, 59, 102168.

10. Khan, S. A. R., Umar, M., Tanveer, M., Yu, Z., & Janjua, L. R. (2022). Business data analytic and digital marketing: Business strategies in the era of covid-19. In 2022 7th International Conference on Data Science and Machine Learning Applications (CDMA) (pp. 13-18). IEEE.

11. Tan, Y., She, X., Zhou, C., & Wang, F. (2022). The motivation of media users and China’s national media digitization construction in the post-covid-19 era. Frontiers in Psychology, 13.

12. Guo, H., Yang, Z., Huang, R., & Guo, A. (2020). The digitalization and public crisis responses of small and medium enterprises: Implications from a covid-19 survey. Frontiers of Business Research in China, 14(1), 1-25.

13. Jin, Y. (2018). Study on Marketing Strategy System of SMEs under Internet Background. American Journal of Industrial and Business Management, 8(3), 638-644.

Data Availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Authors who publish this series agree to the following terms:

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this series.

2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this series.

3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See Open Access Instruction).

Volume Title
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Business and Policy Studies
ISBN (Print)
978-1-915371-67-6
ISBN (Online)
978-1-915371-68-3
Published Date
13 September 2023
Series
Advances in Economics, Management and Political Sciences
ISSN (Print)
2754-1169
ISSN (Online)
2754-1177
DOI
10.54254/2754-1169/12/20230610
Copyright
13 September 2023
Open Access
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Copyright © 2023 EWA Publishing. Unless Otherwise Stated