Social Media Usage as a solution for financial problems of European SMEs

competition and encountering more financial obstacles compared to
larger enterprises, SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises)
become more likely to face business failures, have lower financial
performance and have high financial risk. To overcome those
financial impediments and become more competitive against their
rivals, social media usage might be a solution. This is because even
under the conditions of the covid-19 pandemic, social media has also
stimulated online purchasing behaviours of customers and has been
used as an effective tool by SMEs for marketing purposes. However,
SMEs' usage of these channels might differ depending on the
countries where they are located, so their impacts on financial
obstacles might be different. In this regard, this research examines
whether the impacts of social media usage on the financial problems
of SMEs differ depending on their location. To achieve this goal, the
researchers employ an online survey and direct it to the executives of
1156 Czech, Slovakian and Hungarian SMEs. The researchers apply
Ordinal Logistic Regression with the Logit function in SPSS
statistical tool for analyzing purposes. The results confirm the fact
that while differences do not exist among countries regarding the
impact of social media usage on business failures, the effects of social
media usage on financial performance and financial risk differ
between Hungarian and Czech-Slovakian SMEs. Czech and
Slovakian SMEs show similar attitudes in all of the analyzed
variables.