The role of demographic characteristics and digital literacy in the digital marketing of sports cafes and shops

Digital technologies, along with the use of various traditional marketing methods, are able to have a significant impact on customer acquisition and sales of organizations in different sizes. Also in recent years, due to the increasing use of digital devices or in critical situations such as the widespread outbreak of the Corona virus, organizations and companies are finding it increasingly necessary to benefit from the digital market to continue their activities and progress. But, the use of technology in any field requires its own digital literacy. Digital technology tools in corporate digital marketing are no exception. Managers and salespeople of business units must have sufficient literacy and knowledge of the field of their work and the digital tools they use for digital marketing. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of demographic characteristics and digital literacy in digital marketing of sports cafes and shops. The research method was descriptive correlation. The statistical population of the study includes; All the officials, managers and owners of cafes and sports shops were in the three provinces of Golestan, Mazandaran and Gilan. These three provinces are located in the north of Iran. It took about 2 months to send 990 invitation links to the owners, managers and sellers of cafes and sports shops. 293 people clicked on the link. Finally 122 reliable questionnaires were collected and analyzed. 102 people completed the research questionnaire via smartphone, 19 through a personal computer or laptop, and one using a tablet. Among the completed questionnaires, 75 cafes and 47 sports shops participated. average time for responding to the questionnaire was 9 minutes and 45 seconds. The instruments used were two questionnaires: digital marketing (Shakoori and Mohammadi, 2018) and digital literacy (Tohidi Asl, 2012). The digital literacy questionnaire has 20 questions with a 5-point Likert scale and the digital marketing questionnaire has 27 questions with a 5-point Likert scale. Appearance and content validity of both questionnaires were performed by experts and professors and the structural validity of the questionnaires was done using confirmatory factor analysis. Cronbach's alpha of the Digital Marketing Questionnaire and the Digital Literacy Questionnaire of 0.832 and 0.930 also confirmed their reliability. Questionnaires were designed on Porsline, and distributed and collected online using Social Media platforms like Instagram and websites which interduces cafes or Department of Labor`s website. SPSS software was used to analyze the information obtained from the questionnaire. Data analysis was performed using correlation tests and regression analysis. In the present study, descriptive statistics including tables and graphs and central and dispersion indices such as mean and standard deviation were used to describe the research variables and demographic variables. Spearman correlation test was used to test the research hypotheses due to the non-normality of the data. Multiple simple regression was also used to investigate the impact of digital marketing on digital literacy and its dimensions. 75 cafes with a frequency of %61.48 and 47 sports stores with a frequency of %38.52 participated in completing the questionnaire. Also, the statistical sample of the study includes 96 men with a frequency of %78.69 and 26 women with a frequency of %21.31. The highest number of questionnaire completers is related to the age group of 26-35 years with a frequency of 56.57% and the lowest number is related to the age group of 45 years and above with a frequency of 1.63%. The frequency of education levels of individuals is from high to low, respectively bachelor's degree, diploma, postgraduate education and finally associate degree. The highest income with a frequency of 53 individuals is related to 5.1 million and more, and the lowest amount of income is related to a million and less with a frequency of 8 people. The results showed that among the demographic characteristics, age and education level variables play a role in digital marketing. In order to investigate the effect of these two variables on the components of digital marketing due to their abnormal distribution, Kruskal[1]Wallis nonparametric test was used. According to the results, there is a significant difference between the variable of using social networks and the age of the respondents at the level of 99% confidence and between the variable of digital marketing performance with the age group of the respondents, there is a significant difference at the 95% confidence level. The age group of 26-35 years has more use of social networks and also a better marketing performance than other age groups. There is a significant difference between the digital marketing performance variable and the respondents 'education level at 99% confidence level and between the digital marketing planning variable and the respondents' education level at 95% confidence level. Graduates have better marketing performance and better marketing planning than other study groups. The nonparametric Mann-Whitney test was used to investigate the role of gender on the components of digital marketing due to the abnormal distribution of variables; But the obtained results did not show any significant differences between the components of digital marketing between groups with different genders. The results of regression analysis also confirmed the significant impact of digital literacy and its levels on digital marketing. Regression analysis showed that the variables of digital competence, digital usage and digital transformation had a significant effect on the dependent variable. Linear regression was used to investigate the effect of each level of digital literacy on each dimension of digital marketing. According to the results of this test, the most effect of the digital competency variable was on the variable of using social networks, which explained 38.7% of this variable. Also, the most effect of the digital user variable was on the variable of using social networks, which explained 41.8% of this variable. Finally, the most effect of the digital transfer variable was on the digital marketing planning variable, which explained 46.7% of this variable. According to the findings, all cafes and sports shops are recommended to use younger and more educated people who have a higher level of digital literacy, and to consider digital literacy promotion courses for them. It is also recommended that owners of cafes and sports shops continue digital marketing alongside their traditional marketing with short- or long-term planning. The spread of the coronavirus and the limited activity of cafes and sports shops can be the best opportunity to take advantage of digital marketing