Entrepreneurs all over seek ways of introducing their products to international markets, but international business environments pose a lot of opportunities and threats to foreign entrants. The cultural, political and technological environment has a lot to do in entrepreneurial success in global markets. The study examined the effect of social media on international business venturing. The general objective of the study is to critically determine the extent to which social media have contributed to the international venturing of entrepreneurs in Nigeria. The study concludes that since technological products provide ample benefits for international entrepreneurs, organizations should endeavour to provide indispensable technologies that support international transactions.
TopIntroduction
Venturing in International business, unlike domestic business, requires operating simultaneously in more than one kind of environment, coordinating one’s business operations, and using the experience gained in one country for making decisions in another country.
According to Otokiti (2007),international Business refers to the carrying out business activities across national boundaries for the satisfaction of human needs and wants and the extent of a firm’s involvement abroad is a function of its commitment to the pursuit of foreign markets.The demands are tough and the stakes are high. International business entrepreneurs are not only sensitive to different marketing environments internationally but balancing marketing moves worldwide to seek optimum results for their businesses is the key.
In the research conducted by OECD (1997), governments support cross-border entrepreneurship and in particular exports to increase national wealth and to improve international competitiveness of the national economy. Cross-border entrepreneurship has become a more widespread phenomenon in the past decades. Traditionally, multinational enterprises (MNEs) were mainly responsible for flows of international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), which are the prime driving forces of globalization. However, Communication is a process that involves exchange of information, thoughts, ideas and emotions. It requires a sender, a message and a receiver. Also in recent times, the social media has been a major business interactive tool due to the proliferation of internet and advancement in global technology, information seems to be disseminated faster and links between persons are easily built and this has a way of creating opportunities and risk for those using the medium; in essence the usage of social media has its own positive and negative sides in business.
Social media encompass a variety of Web-based and mobile technologies. For business professionals, social media may be used for professional networking, interfacing with partners and customers. Social media comprise a number of online and mobile resources that provide a forum for the generation, sharing, and discussion of individualized ideas and content (source?). Social media are commonly defined by specific applications and/or Web tools, most of which are widely accessible and free to use or available at minimal cost. These applications may be categorized by purpose, including such functions as professional networking (LinkedIn, Doximity), social networking (Facebook, Google_), recommending/filtering (Yelp, Delicious), media sharing (Flickr, YouTube), content production (blogs, Twitter), knowledge/information aggregation and location-based services (Foursquare), among others.
The use of social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, e-mail, photo sharing, social networking, and the like does not have a single preordained outcome. Therefore, attempts to outline their effects on business venturing are often reduced to duelling anecdotes. According to Madden and Zickuhr (2011), it was discovered that as at March 2008, there were 200 million blogs worldwide, 450 million people on Facebook, 27 million tweets every 24 hours, and 1.2 billion YouTube views each day. These staggering statistics reflect the explosive growth social media has experienced over the past years. Nevertheless, the effects of social media on international business venturing for entrepreneurs seems unclear especially in developing economies as Nigeria, the international market serves as an avenue for creative entrepreneurs to earn foreign income outside their country of existence; the international business environment makes it competitive for many that want to venture in the international business due to dynamic nature of environment and culture. Social media communication factors are unpredictable and in most times they form the basis for decision for local entrepreneurs to break into new markets due to affordability. There are many ways to break into new markets which include exporting, foreign direct investment, joint venture and international partnerships, all these options seem to tie their feasibility around what is obtainable in the market to break into. For example, factors like technological change, cultural and international governmental laws are difficult to predict to get a business to be stable in a new international environment.