The purpose of this paper is to examine the perception of farmers towards use of social media for marketing of agricultural products and weaknesses in the use of social media. The research also examined the relationship between demographic profile of respondents and usage of social media and the factors extracted.
The authors collected data from 100 respondents using a structured and non-disguised questionnaire. The data collected were analysed using one-sample t-test, independent-sample t-test and factor analysis.
The findings of the study reveal that three dimensions on which the perception of farmers towards use of social media for marketing of agricultural products can be classified are benefits of cost advantage and increase in turnover, promotional benefits and customer-related factors, while three dimensions on which the perception of farmers towards the weaknesses in the use of social media for marketing of agricultural products can be classified are risk elements, technical problems and ineffectiveness. It was concluded that age of the respondents is significantly and positively related to benefits of cost advantage and increase in turnover, promotional benefits and ineffectiveness of social media. It was also found that education of the respondents influences the promotional benefits derived from using social media and customer-related factors. Moreover, the usage of social media in terms of duration and frequency influences the benefits of cost advantage, increase in turnover, customer-related factors, risk elements and technical problems faced while using social media.
This research could provide an insight to the researchers about the perception of farmers towards social media usage and thereby help them to conduct further research in this area.
The research contributes to existing literature by providing original research related to perception of farmers towards the use of social media for marketing of agricultural products using survey data from farmers which have important policy implications.
