The study was presented at the 7th Sanem Annual Economist Conference 2024 in Dhaka.
About half of SMEs operating through social media and other e-commerce platforms suffer from fraudulent customers, the 7th Sanem Annual Economist Conference held in Dhaka today (February 24) said. This was revealed in a research paper presented at the (SAEC) 2024 session.
The paper, “The impact of social media marketing on the performance of SMEs during and after COVID-19: The case of Bangladesh,” was written by Saifa Samsad Porsha, a graduate student in the Department of Economics, Jagannath University. Presented at the session. Growth Dynamics”.
Professor Mustafizur Rahman, distinguished researcher at the Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD), chaired the session.
Mustafizur Rahman said, “During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen tremendous growth in small and medium-sized enterprises, especially online small and medium-sized enterprises and e-commerce platforms.Also, many small-scale industries have closed down. It is true.”
He also said that although online product delivery services are rapidly gaining popularity among people, it is also true that there are complaints from customers about the efforts of suppliers and the quality of products provided. .
He said internet access and internet costs are also important for e-commerce.
Porsha said in his paper that there are 2,500 e-commerce platforms in Bangladesh, of which 95% are small and medium-sized enterprises, 4% are medium-sized enterprises and 1% are large enterprises.
He also said that there are over 500,000 Facebook-based business pages in Bangladesh, of which 200,000 pages are currently doing active business. E-commerce platforms in Bangladesh are growing at an annual rate of 25%.
We surveyed 52 respondents and found that SMEs' reliance on social media platforms has increased significantly in the post-COVID-19 period.
Approximately 41.5% of respondents said that having more posts and pages on social media would be beneficial to them.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 26.9% of entrepreneurs thought live streaming social media advertising was beneficial.
16% of respondents strongly agree that live streaming is beneficial in the post-COVID-19 period, while 38% agree.
Pre-COVID-19, 7.5% strongly agreed that advertising through social media influencers and bloggers was beneficial.
17% strongly agree and 43.4% agree that advertising through influencers and bloggers on social media is beneficial post-COVID-19.
Porsha also said that the average daily transaction amount on social media by businesses was Tk 440 billion in 2020, but the amount increased to Tk 160 billion by the end of 2021.
He added that the new era of online business has begun with multiple changes, and the COVID-19 pandemic has dynamically shifted business models to the online field.
