Identifying and Prioritizing Obstacles to Applying Online Social Media Marketing Strategy in Small and Medium-Sized Companies in Iran (Using A Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach)

Abstract

This research has been done with the aim of identifying and prioritizing the obstacles to using online social media marketing strategy in small and medium-sized companies in Iran, and based on the process of fuzzy hierarchical analysis. The statistical population of this research was senior marketing managers of small and medium companies based in Tehran. In the process of selecting statistical samples, judgmental sampling method was used. Accordingly, a group of 35 experts were selected and participated in the research. The main tool of data collection in this research was three researcher-made questionnaires that were designed according to different goals. The first questionnaire was designed with the aim of identifying obstacles and was designed in an open-ended manner, the second questionnaire was designed with the aim of screening and categorizing obstacles, in a closed form and based on a five-point Likert scale, and finally, the third questionnaire was designed with the aim of determining the weights and rank of each of the obstacles. And it was designed as a pairwise comparison. The data of this research were analyzed in different stages through SPSS, MATLAB and Excel software. In this process, analyzes such as t test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, exploratory factor analysis, and fuzzy hierarchical analysis process were performed. Finally, the research results led to the identification of 3 main obstacles (obstacles related to the company, obstacles related to target customers, obstacles related to the country of Iran) and 20 secondary obstacles and their ranking was determined. It should be noted that this research is applied in terms of purpose, in terms of survey approach and exploratory studies.