How does communication in SMEs change in the digital era?Some insights from the entrepreneurial perspective

The aim of the paper is to present an empirical study that examines digital communication in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the entrepreneurial perspective. The academic literature is mainly focused on digital transformation in large companies and more research on communication in SMEs is required. To fill this gap, an exploratory study was carried out in 205 Italian manufacturing SMEs, using the questionnaire method. Data analysis was conducted with descriptive statistics. The preliminary results show that SMEs still do not exploit the benefits offered by digital communication as the adoption of digital communication tools and the level of marketing and communication skills are still very low although some little gaps by company size (small and medium) and type (B2C and B2B) emerge. The value of our paper can be traced to the broad perspective adopted to investigate digital communication which includes the analysis of the digital communication mix, social media areas and scopes, and digital skills in SMEs, by company size and type.