DIGITAL MARKETING PRACTICES IN MOROCCAN SMES (SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED ENTERPRISES): A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

The digital era offers Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) opportunities to grow and even challenge larger companies. Yet, it is observed by scholars that SMEs are reluctant to implement new technology tools, which leads us to question the decisive factors to either adopt or not digital marketing practices. Therefore, this paper aims to systematically explore literature on digital marketing’s components since it encompasses a large area of practice. The research goal is to understand the position and corporate behavior regarding the adoption of this discipline in global SMEs with a closer look at the Moroccan context. The methodology followed is a qualitative documentary research that consists of data collection, references selection, and thorough analysis. This process consists of two phases. The first phase involves conducting an exploratory systematic literature review to refine the generated results using keywords, abstracts, and titles. The documents were screened based on specified inclusion and exclusion criteria to eliminate irrelevant topics. The second phase involves conducting an in-depth extended systematic literature review to thoroughly analyze the content of the references by reading and comprehending the full texts. This research work reveals that e-marketing positively influences SMEs. Social media marketing is disclosed to be the most adopted form in SMEs. However, this literature review uncovered conflicting opinions regarding the implementation of e-marketing in SMEs. Some sources highlighted limitations like resource constraints, while others saw potential in this area as technology becomes increasingly accessible. The perspective of this paper is to conduct an exploratory qualitative research, followed by a confirmatory quantitative research within Moroccan SMEs to identify factors influencing them to adopt social media marketing. This article is structured according to IMRaD framework. It outlines an introduction for context and research problem, followed by research methodology, review of literature, results and discussion, and finally a conclusion.

Keywords

• digital marketing
• e-marketing
• social media
• small and medium sized enterprises (smes)
• marketing digital
• marketing numerique
• reseaux sociaux