Impact of social media marketing on small and medium-sized restaurants in London, UK

This study is about determining and evaluating the use of social media applications for 
marketing purposes across the restaurant industry of the UK. The specific context chosen in 
this study is small and medium-sized restaurants operating in London because London is the 
hub of tourists and serves a large number of diverse customers regularly. Small restaurants 
were selected because these are more vulnerable to external forces of change, especially a crisis 
such as COVID-19; moreover, these restaurants have limited budgets to develop and use 
marketing strategies to survive and grow. Overall, the market dynamics for small restaurants 
(that exist in large numbers across London) are complex and volatile, which makes them an 
interesting subject to study. An increasing number of customers use smartphones, the internet 
and social media apps for shopping and buying. Therefore, the intention was to explore and 
critically evaluate how consumer buying behaviour can be influenced by the marketing 
practices of restaurants on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, 
branded applications and WhatsApp. The methodology adopted in this study was qualitative 
and inductive in nature because the goal was to gather the subjective opinions and perceptions 
of the managers and owners of small and medium-sized restaurants on their marketing 
strategies. An interpretivist philosophy was adopted for this study to complement the subjective 
views of reality. This was suitable because the research objectives required getting the opinions 
of restaurant respondents as per their unique experiences. Using purposive sampling technique, 
semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 respondents who were either owners or 
managers of small and medium-sized restaurants. Thematic analysis was used to present the 
analysis and to identify key themes and sub-themes. This study found that social media apps 
are an effective source of marketing for small and medium-sized restaurants in London. With 
the help of social media marketing, via apps, restaurants improved their brand visibility and 
brand image and in some cases sales as well. Friends and family were identified as valuable 
sources of customer attraction in this regard. Instagram was the most popular and effective 
social media platform for marketing for the restaurants and for influencing consumer 
behaviour. Using paid and original content advertisements, improving skills to use social media 
apps and IT, being more adaptable and proactive towards the business environment, improving 
social media marketing content and pages and then linking them to websites’ contacts, 
integration of delivery apps, like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat, and willingness to integrate 
social media marketing strategy are some of the recommendations provided to small and 
medium-sized restaurants as a result of this study.