Abstract:
Community enterprises in Thailand seek to grow their online market through social media deployed in their marketing
activities. However, little is known about their motives and transformation of the online marketing landscape and entrepreneurial
practices. Drawing upon the Uses and Gratifications (UG) approach, this study explored the gratification niches of social media as
an innovative online marketing tool for community enterprises. In the first step, we developed a focus group to understand motives
of using social media for online marketing to assess users’ gratifications. Next, we conducted a survey with a sample of 400
users, in-depth interviews and a Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat (SWOT) analysis to draw insights of keys to ensure
high profitable growth. The finding revealed that new users had high gratifications with using social media for online marketing
and customer trust, electronic satisfaction and trust, product characteristics, quality of online marketing, social information, value
perceived by customers, electronic loyalty, online marketing tools, and soft skills and communication. However, their gratifications
contradict their awareness of online marketing risks. This study came with implications in line with UG process, social and content aspects
