Economic Development and Business Environment in EU Countries under the Social Media Support

Abstract

Various internet platforms are rapidly penetrating the existing business environment. They enable the creation of a new social media strategy for entrepreneurial entities with the aim of strengthening their presence and economic efficiency on the market. This is achieved via faster, better targeting and matching the individual producers and their potential clients. The Enterprise Social Media (ESM), helps establish better-focused social campaigns to address the core partners interested in your products or services. Our paper strives to identify the most frequently referred internet platforms applied in social communication on an entrepreneurial level and specify the attributes and shares of their value added. This paper utilizes the Eurostat data on the economic development of individual EU countries, namely the values of GDP per capita in absolute values as well as in relative values toward the average EU level. Also, statistical data on development in social media applications on the entrepreneurial level are presented and analyzed. For this, we applied the selected statistical approaches as correlation and regression analyses, as well as cluster analysis. The accessible statistical data shows and supports the hypothesis of the correlative impact of ESM applications on the economic performance of individual EU countries measured by GDP per capita. The main research limitation stems from the deficiency of more detailed data on the ESM applications, at the level of the entrepreneurial entities. The need for a more precise classification of the ESM applications, should be also considered. Practical implications - our findings show the importance of the various IT technologies for entrepreneurial performance and finally the economic performance of individual EU countries. Such arguments justify the request for higher attention to strengthening the policy of building ESM platforms on all levels of national policies. This paper aims to clarify the relatively new phenomenon in our economic practice – the fast expansion of new internet applications and the support of their further practical utilizations.