Digital platforms as a driver of the international marketing resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises under geopolitical instability

Abstract

This article examines how digital platforms affect the international marketing resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises during periods of geopolitical disruption. For an SME, a marketplace, social network, advertising system, payment service, or logistics platform can provide rapid access to foreign customers without the cost of building a comparable infrastructure independently. That advantage is nevertheless accompanied by a transfer of control. Customer visibility, transaction rules, ratings, advertising accounts, and some market data remain within an ecosystem governed by an external platform owner. The study is conceptual and draws on research concerning SME digital transformation, platform-based internationalisation, dynamic marketing capabilities, organisational resilience, and digital risk. The sources were compared to identify the resources supplied by platforms, the capabilities firms need in order to use those resources, and the forms of dependency that become critical during disruption. International marketing resilience is understood here as an SME's ability to retain manageable links with foreign markets, revise its offer and channels when conditions change, and establish a workable new market configuration when restoring the previous one is no longer feasible. The analysis suggests that platformisation affects resilience through two connected processes. Platforms can improve market sensing, maintain communication, support low-cost experimentation, and help firms redirect marketing activity towards other segments or countries. The same infrastructure can also increase exposure when sales, customer relationships, data, reputation, or payments are concentrated in one ecosystem. These effects should therefore not be treated as separate stages: an SME may gain operational efficiency while simultaneously accumulating strategic vulnerability. The outcome depends on digital marketing competence, the structure of the platform portfolio, direct access to customers, data portability, cybersecurity preparedness, and the availability of alternative communication and transaction channels. The article contributes an integrated explanation of platform opportunity and platform dependency and positions international marketing flexibility as the mechanism linking external digital resources to resilience. The managerial implication is not to minimise platform use, but to manage it so that scale and reach do not replace the firm's own market knowledge, customer assets, and capacity to switch channels.