Social media behaviors and barriers impacting women e-commerce entrepreneurs in rural Australia: A pilot study

Karen Sutherland; Sarah Casey; Gail Crimmins

doi:10.1080/15575330.2024.2339279

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Social media behaviors and barriers impacting women e-commerce entrepreneurs in rural Australia: A pilot study

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Social media behaviors and barriers impacting women e-commerce entrepreneurs in rural Australia: A pilot study

Karen Sutherland, Sarah Casey and Gail Crimmins

Community Development, Vol.56(1), pp.39-58

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15575330.2024.2339279

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Abstract

Other language, communication and culture not elsewhere classified

Gender studies

Other commerce, management, tourism and services

women entrepreneur

e-commerce

rural

regional

social media

community development

E-commerce businesses have proven to offer lifelines for residents in regional, rural, and remote (RRR) locations traditionally reliant on agricultural income. Prolonged droughts and frequent floods have had devastating impacts on the ability to farm, propelling the need to generate off-farm income to survive. This ever-growing necessity to overcome climate hardship has catalyzed a new generation of women e-commerce entrepreneurs in RRR Australia, in turn, supporting community development. Our study focuses on interviews with successful women e-commerce entrepreneurs from rural Queensland, Australia, to explore the common barriers they face and their use of social media to connect with consumers throughout Australia and globally. Results identified their three greatest challenges to be product supply, product distribution, and unreliable internet connectivity. Data exploring social media behaviors suggested a strong reliance on Facebook and Instagram to drive website traffic and generate sales. This study provides a unique contribution to knowledge regarding an under-researched segment of entrepreneurs, and how they contribute to community development.

Details

Title: Social media behaviors and barriers impacting women e-commerce entrepreneurs in rural Australia: A pilot study
Authors: Karen Sutherland (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Sarah Casey (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Gail Crimmins (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
Publication details: Community Development, Vol.56(1), pp.39-58
Publisher: Routledge
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.1080/15575330.2024.2339279
ISSN: 1944-7485; 1557-5330
Copyright note: © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Organisation Unit: School of Business and Creative Industries
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991013598702621
Output Type: Journal article