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The Role of Digitalization in SMEs’ Strategy Development: The Case of Sweden

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The Changing Role of SMEs in Global Business

Abstract

The diffusion of digital technologies has enabled a notable transformation in firms’ boundaries, processes, structures, roles, and interactions. This digital revolution affects a company as a whole, thereby redefining its strategies, entrepreneurial processes, and governance mechanisms or structures. The aim of this study is to understand how digitalization affects small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) marketing strategy. The study uses a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews. The findings demonstrate that digital marketing tools demand few resources and have a positive effect on competitive advantage. The study contributes to our knowledge on how small enterprises develop strategy, showing that they focus on customer preferences. It also shows the benefits of SME digital marketing where digitalizing an enterprise’s marketing activities helps to reduce costs and increase dynamic capabilities to maintain competitive advantage.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business and Economic Studies, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden

    Daniella Fjellström, Aihie Osarenkhoe, Tobias Pettersson & Daniel Tadesse

Authors
  1. Daniella Fjellström
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  2. Aihie Osarenkhoe
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  3. Tobias Pettersson
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  4. Daniel Tadesse
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniella Fjellström .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Alkis Thrassou

  2. Department of Marketing, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Demetris Vrontis

  3. School of Business Administration, College of Management, Rishon Lezion, Israel

    Yaakov Weber

  4. Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    S. M. Riad Shams

  5. Department of Accounting and Finance, Hellenic Mediterranean University Heraklion, Crete, Greece

    Evangelos Tsoukatos

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Fjellström, D., Osarenkhoe, A., Pettersson, T., Tadesse, D. (2020). The Role of Digitalization in SMEs’ Strategy Development: The Case of Sweden. In: Thrassou, A., Vrontis, D., Weber, Y., Shams, S.M.R., Tsoukatos, E. (eds) The Changing Role of SMEs in Global Business. Palgrave Studies in Cross-disciplinary Business Research, In Association with EuroMed Academy of Business. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45831-7_4

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