From adoption to assimilation: routinised GenAI use and SMEs' digital presence

Abstract

This study examines whether and how SMEs' post-adoption use of generative AI (GenAI) relates to firms' market-facing digital presence. Moving beyond binary adoption, it asks how three usage patterns, i.e. duration (continuity over time), volume (cumulative interaction) and frequency (regularity of use), are associated with externally observable signals of online visibility and credibility, including website content depth, social media audience/engagement, web traffic, and search visibility. We integrate three firm-level data sources for 175 Italian SMEs: (1) GenAI application usage logs (Dec 2023–Jul 2024) to construct duration, volume and frequency measures, (2) digital trace indicators from an SEO/competitive intelligence platform (Dec 2024) to capture five presence dimensions and build a composite index via PCA and (3) administrative controls from AIDA. We estimate OLS models with heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors and include industry and region fixed effects (final models: 138 firms with complete data). GenAI usage frequency is positively and significantly associated with the PCA-based digital presence index, while usage duration and cumulative volume are not. When duration, volume and frequency are entered jointly, none is statistically significant, consistent with overlap among post-adoption usage measures. The results indicate that routinised, regular GenAI use, rather than time since adoption or total interaction intensity, is the usage dimension most closely linked to stronger market-facing digital presence. The paper provides post-adoption evidence on GenAI in SMEs by linking behavioural usage logs to later, externally visible digital outcomes. It operationalises GenAI engagement through distinct continuity, intensity and regularity measures and connects them to a multidimensional digital presence construct derived from web and social media traces. By combining platform logs, SEO intelligence data and administrative firm records, the study offers a replicable approach for explaining heterogeneous outcomes after GenAI adoption and highlights the strategic relevance of routinisation for SME competitiveness.