Digital Literacy, Social Networks, and Digital Marketing among Informal Micro-Enterprises

Abstract

In Pakistan, informal micro business is responsible for 72.1% non-agricultural jobs. However, digital marketing research has been almost exclusively conducted with registered small and medium enterprises. This study focuses on the influence of digital literacy and formal education and social network ties in the adoption of digital marketing by informal micro-enterprises. I t also examines whether the effectiveness of the marketing is increased by adoption. It is an analysis of a face-to-face cross-sectional survey of 312 owner-managers in Urdu. They operated in commercial clusters of Layyah and Kotsultan with up to 10 workers and their enterprises were either unregistered or partially registered. The respondents were selected by using stratified purposive sampling. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to analyses the data, using 10,000 bootstrap subsamples. Nearly all people have access to a smartphone (94.2%) as illustrated by the results. The use was much less, and only 36.5% have an active WhatsApp Business catalogue. Digital literacy (β = .38, p < .001) and social network ties (β = .31, p < .001) predicted adoption. There was no significant direct effect of formal education (β = .06, p = .263). The model accounted for 41% of the variance in both adoption and effectiveness. These findings suggest that access is no longer the main barrier to digital marketing in informal enterprises. Now, capability and learning through networks are important.