horticulturae Article The Motivation, Strategies, and Barriers for Adopting Social Media Marketing in the Flower Retailing Business Li-Chun Chen and Li-Chun Huang * Department of Bio-Industry Communication and Development, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +886-2-3366-4418 Received: 20 September 2020; Accepted: 6 November 2020; Published: 12 November 2020 Abstract: Florists have been adopting social media as a new marketing instrument to promote their business. However, academic research has rarely looked into the existing state of that adoption. Consequently, several fundamental problems remain unknown regarding the application of social media marketing (SMM) among florists, which may limit the development of the flower retailing business in the current social media era. In seeking to address this deficiency, this study aimed to investigate florists’ motivations, strategies, and perceived performance in relation to the application of SMM, as well as to explore the barriers faced by florists regarding the adoption of SMM. The authors implemented these objectives by interviewing 35 flower shop owners who each had established a brand page on Facebook. The qualitative data obtained from the interviews were analyzed using a grounded hermeneutic editing approach. The study’s results revealed that even though there were different motivations for florists to adopt social media marketing, including increasing brand exposure, improving customer relationship, and reducing the cost of advertising, showing expertise in floral design to attract consumers was the most common motivation stressed by the interviewees. The strategies mostly used by florists in managing their Facebook brand pages included providing high quality posts, cross-industry advertising, and switching consumers from online questions to a physical store visit.