How Small Food Businesses Can Win Big on Social Media

In the current emergence of Internet culture, social media presents an opportunity tosolve the marketing issue related to the International & African Food Market's lack of visibility,which adversely affects its profitability. Social media allows businesses to engage withpotential customers, anticipate their needs and wants, and promote products and services withreduced costs. Its usage in mobile devices makes it a real marketing asset and an importantturnover generator for local small businesses. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative case studywas to identify digital marketing strategies that include social media to increase the visibility ofthe International & African Food Market in the community to achieve sales and compete in themarket. It stressed the impact of social media on streamlining marketing activities by applyingmarketing segmentation theory and the PESO model. To meet its objective this study used thequalitative method. Thus, five steps or phases of qualitative analysis were addressed to getmeanings and interpret data to answer the research questions. The primary data collected fromthe sample of thirty International & African Food Market stakeholders on their characteristicsand perceptions of social media usage indicated that its customers have a strong presence onsocial media that they use daily via their mobile phones or smartphones anytime and anywhere.Integrating social media such as Facebook in the International & African Food Market websitehas a positive impact on the streamlining of its marketing, attracting target customers, andensuring a strong presence in the community.