The proliferation of digital marketing devices (DMDs), such as mobile applications, presents significant opportunities for small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) to enhance their business operations. Digital marketing allows for continuous client interaction, transforming customer communication methods. DMDs facilitate online advertising and enable businesses to reach potential customers anytime, anywhere. Successful digital marketing relies on effective planning and strategy development, fostering a strong digital marketing culture and cultivating emotional connections with customers. However, despite the potential benefits, SMEs often struggle to integrate DMDs into their marketing strategies due to various challenges. While digitalization offers significant advantages, including personalization, secure transactions, and efficient communication, existing research often employs traditional, unidirectional quantitative approaches that overlook the unique characteristics of SMEs. These traditional methods typically focus on hypotheses and predictive outcomes, failing to account for the specific context and nuances of small businesses. Consequently, a broader framework is needed to more comprehensively understand SME DMD adoption. This study addresses the limited research on DMD adoption in remote areas of Nigeria, focusing on service-oriented micro-businesses given the service-oriented nature of the Nigerian economy. The low adoption rate of DMDs in developing countries like Nigeria hinders economic growth, highlighting the need for a deeper understanding of the factors affecting adoption. The study aims to bridge this research gap by exploring critical success factors and developing an integrated framework to guide future research and practice, thereby helping to reduce time and resources wasted in searching for relevant information regarding DMD adoption.

The literature underscores the crucial role of SMEs in industrial growth and economic development. However, research on digital marketing technologies among Nigerian SMEs, particularly in underserved areas, is limited. Existing studies often apply models from developed countries without considering the unique cultural and economic contexts of Nigeria. This research focuses on service micro-businesses, which constitute a significant portion of the Nigerian economy and represent a key sector for digital marketing. SMEs leveraging DMDs should prioritize strategies that foster awareness, engagement, and trust among target customers. DMDs complement traditional marketing by providing seamless digital communication, enabling businesses to connect with customers regardless of location. They also facilitate automation of marketing activities and allow for a broader reach, shifting the focus from individual customers to the entire market. The Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework is used as a theoretical basis due to its ability to incorporate a wider range of factors influencing technology adoption. The TOE framework also accounts for environmental dimensions often overlooked by other models such as Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation Theory (IDT). This study specifically considers the TOE framework's ability to incorporate environmental factors.

This study adopts a qualitative approach, specifically utilizing both unstructured and semi-structured interviews. The study employed purposive sampling to select service-oriented micro-businesses in Owerri West, Imo State, Nigeria, which have adopted at least one form of DMD within the past three years. Micro-businesses were defined as those employing 1-10 workers. Owerri West was chosen due to its large number of registered micro-businesses and relatively low DMD adoption rate. The choice of qualitative methodology allows for in-depth exploration of the micro-business managers' real-life experiences and perspectives. The research involved a two-stage interview process. First, unstructured interviews with four participants helped in initial exploration and the assessment of the applicability of the theoretical codes (drawn from the TOE framework) to the raw data. This initial stage helped refine the semi-structured interview questions used in the second stage. The semi-structured interviews were conducted with the remaining 22 participants, ensuring confidentiality and establishing researcher credibility. Each interview lasted approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes. The data was collected between February and December 2019. The data analysis employed a thematic analysis approach. Initially, theory-driven thematic analysis, informed by the TOE framework, was used to code and categorize data from the unstructured interviews. Subsequently, a combination of theory-driven and empirically driven thematic analysis was applied to the entire dataset (from both unstructured and semi-structured interviews) using NVivo software for data management and analysis. To ensure reliability, inter-coder reliability analysis was performed, yielding an 82% agreement rate among two judges, exceeding the 70% benchmark. The analysis also ensured dependability and conformability checks to ensure that data interpretation was appropriately linked back to the raw data. While some additional factors were identified, they were excluded due to insufficient support and failure to meet the reliability test, suggesting avenues for future research.

The thematic analysis revealed 14 critical success factors influencing DMD adoption by micro-businesses, categorized into four dimensions: Technology, Organization, Environment, and Impact Expectancy. **Technology:** * **Functional Capability:** DMDs must be efficient, high-performing, and easy to use to meet the needs of micro-businesses. Complexity and slow performance hinder adoption. * **Adaptive Capacity:** DMDs need to seamlessly integrate with existing business processes and technologies to minimize integration costs and challenges. * **Expandability:** The flexibility and scalability of DMDs are critical. The ability to adapt to changing business needs and integrate with other applications is crucial. **Organization:** * **Collective Understanding:** Shared understanding of the business purpose and the potential benefits of DMDs among employees is essential for successful adoption. * **Degree of Partnership:** Collaboration and partnerships among micro-businesses can facilitate information sharing, knowledge acquisition, and resource pooling for effective DMD adoption. However, concerns about exposing competitive advantages may limit collaboration. * **Diversity of Information:** Accessing and integrating diverse information sources from both within and outside the organization enhances the understanding of available technologies and their potential benefits. **Environment:** * **Level of Training:** Adequate training is necessary for effective DMD implementation. However, training that is too time-consuming can be a deterrent. * **Quality of Service Delivery:** DMDs need to provide reliable and efficient service delivery to meet customer needs and expectations. * **Customer Fulfillment:** Meeting customer needs and expectations through DMDs is vital for successful adoption, as customer satisfaction directly impacts business success. * **Intense Competition:** The competitive landscape influences adoption decisions, with micro-businesses seeking DMDs that enhance their competitive advantage. **Impact Expectancy:** * **Budget:** Cost-effectiveness and the potential for cost reduction are major factors affecting DMD adoption. * **Business Expansion:** The ability of DMDs to facilitate business growth and expansion significantly influences adoption decisions. * **Diversity:** DMDs that enable differentiation and the creation of unique services are more likely to be adopted. * **Return on Investment (ROI):** The expected financial returns from DMD investment are crucial decision-making factors.

The findings highlight the importance of considering a multi-faceted approach to understanding DMD adoption by micro-businesses. The extended TOE framework, incorporating the impact expectancy dimension, provides a richer understanding of the factors influencing adoption decisions. The emphasis on immediate and tangible benefits, such as cost reduction and business expansion, underscores the practical concerns of resource-constrained micro-businesses. While the TOE framework captures the technological, organizational, and environmental factors, the impact expectancy dimension addresses the critical need for demonstrable ROI and immediate positive outcomes. This emphasizes the pragmatic nature of adoption decisions in the context of micro-businesses, who often lack the resources and time to experiment with new technologies without clear and immediate benefits. The study's findings contribute to existing literature by offering a more nuanced understanding of DMD adoption, particularly within the specific context of developing economies.

This study contributes to the literature by identifying 14 critical success factors influencing DMD adoption among Nigerian service-oriented micro-businesses. It extends the TOE framework to incorporate an impact expectancy dimension, providing a more robust model for understanding SME technology adoption. The findings offer practical guidance for micro-businesses seeking to improve their DMD adoption strategies, focusing on cost-effectiveness, immediate benefits, and competitive advantages. Future research could explore the generalizability of this extended TOE framework across different sectors and developing economies, and consider other methodological approaches to further validate the findings.

This study's qualitative methodology, while providing rich insights, has inherent limitations. The relatively small sample size (26 participants) may limit the generalizability of the findings. The qualitative nature of the data collection and analysis might introduce respondent and researcher bias, potentially affecting the interpretation of the results. Future research employing larger, mixed-methods approaches, including quantitative elements, could enhance the robustness and generalizability of the findings. Furthermore, the framework's applicability to other developing countries requires further investigation due to potential cultural and economic variations.