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Abstract
The phenomenon of social media and its prevalent use by small businesses and consumers is hard to deny. Consequently, much research has discussed the importance of small businesses participating on social media platforms and have offered suggestions for how small businesses should implement a social media strategy. Yet little research has focused on how small businesses use social media once they are active participants on the platform. This study sought to investigate the use of social media by Athens fashion boutiques and their customers responses to this social media activity. Following a Uses and Gratification theoretical framework and a mixed methods convergent parallel design, this study employed qualitative interviews of the fashion boutiques and a quantitative survey of the boutiques customers. Four Athens fashion boutiques were interviewed with a semi-structured interview and 1,142 UGA millennial females were surveyed as part of the data collection for this study. The interviews were analyzed for a constant common theme method, and the hypothesized relationship were investigated using regression data analysis. The findings of this study indicate a convergent analysis of common themes within the qualitative interviews and the quantitative constructs. In particular, the themes of utilizations of social media, process and pressures, and metrics of success emerged from the qualitative interviews. All hypothesized relationships were deemed significant between the constructs of the quantitative survey including social media use, customer-based store equity, satisfaction, store preference, and purchase intention. These findings give important theoretical and managerial implications. This study adds to the body of knowledge grounding a connection between social media use and customer-based store equity. In addition, the merged analysis shows a comparable overlap between the uses and measures of customer responses from the fashion boutique perspective and the customer perspective. Fashion boutiques should create social media content that is satisfying the needs of their customers to foster store equity, which can in turn promote store preference and purchase intention.