Benefits and barriers to social media use in promoting business brands of final-year agribusiness students in Ghana

Abstract

This study quantitatively examined how University of Cape Coast final-year agribusiness students used social media to promote their brands during their supervised agribusiness project, a required practical training course. The results show that using social media to promote agribusinesses helped strengthen their brands and raise awareness of their products. Poor internet and network access and expensive internet data costs were challenges that hindered Agribusiness promotion on social media, hurting entrepreneurs and their capital bases. The study highlighted that sex, monthly income, household size, and revenue source affect agriculture social media training and security. The study found that student agribusiness social media use was crucial to product marketing. The study recommends that the University of Cape Coast should emphasize internet access to allow agribusiness students to build and market their company concepts into competitive brands. The university's Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension should also provide social media training for students.