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The dominant determinant of development, in the current economy affected by globalization, is not the quantity of resources, but especially their productivity. Although the productivity is not everything on the way towards the successful economics, as Krugman (1997) pointed out, it is almost everything in the longrun. The premise of favourable development is therefore the effective, efficient and economical use of available resources, whose appropriate structure and rational allocation is the basis for the efficiency of the process of transforming the potential to entering real outputs. On this basis, a country or region is competing with its surroundings, as well as affecting the living conditions and quality of life of the population (Capello et al., 2011).

Due to the improvement of technologies and increasing number of internet users, more companies choose social networks to promote sales of goods and services, increase recognition and visibility and communication with potential clients in real time online. At the moment, internet marketing is considered one of the most powerful marketing tools, because it unites the biggest number of users and has the means to implement different aims of the companies. The quickly increased popularity of social networks and social commerce are considered the third revolution of communication that provides freedom for companies to communicate with target audience, regardless of place and time (Stoian et al., 2018; Pavlovaite & Gresiene, 2019; Zhou et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2020). Thus, the impact of internet and marketing tools, in a general sense, is a phenomenon that is highly significant in the business world and is developing quickly.

In the current economy, there are some heavily regulated markets, such as the tobacco market, and others on the point of being regulated – markets using fossil combustibles, such as the combustion engine vehicles, as well as the gambling sector. Those markets operate with products or services in some way prejudicial to health and the environment. This fact justifies before the citizens the governmental intervention. Companies operating on those markets have very limited their marketing strategies to promote sells (Henriksen, 2012). In this article, we aim to investigate the options faced by companies for the implementation of marketing strategies that will permit them to scale their sales leadership position once the market is regulated. In the case of the tobacco market, the motivation to regulate emerges due to the causal link between tobacco consumption and several types of cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, reproductive disorders, Alzheimer’s disease (López-Arrieta & Sanz, 2001), and many other negative health consequences. In addition, it has an addictive nature (DHSS, 2004).

Social media (SM) has become one of the largest environments of human interaction. Growth in social network use is evident in developed countries, and to an even greater extent in developing countries (Internet World Stats, 2020). In 2019, 53% of EU enterprises used at least one type of SM and 86% of these used SM to build their image and market their products. Additionally, more than 54% of the people (16–74 years old) living in the EU used the Internet for participating in social networks (Eurostat, 2020a, b). DESI (2020) found that over 65% of all EU citizens use at least one form of SM, the most popular being Facebook and Instagram, especially among young people. Consequently, as the use of SM becomes increasingly common, companies seek to reach and interact with current and potential customers through SM platforms (Shanahan et al., 2019; Wang & Kim, 2017).

Logistics has become one of the key vertical in the organization and as an important industry for an economy as a whole. It plays an important role in the economic development of a country, including various infrastructure development to support and enhance manufacturing and other sectors. The economy has to perform efficiently in this sector for supporting a growth in all other sectors. To provide a visibility on the same, World Bank publishes index for providing visibility on the performance and scope for improvement in logistics sectors of economies. This index is known as logistics performance index and this has been included in this study for understanding the effect on economic development of the country along with the logistics cost.