Instagram Marketing as A Business Development Strategy: A Quantitative Study on Culinary MSMEs in Medan Tembung

This study investigates how specific dimensions of Instagram marketing—content quality, posting ‎frequency, user interaction, and feature utilization—affect business development among culinary ‎MSMEs in Medan Tembung, Indonesia. With over 89 million Instagram users in Indonesia, the ‎platform provides significant opportunities for expanding market reach, brand awareness, and sales ‎performance. Using a quantitative associative causal approach, data were collected from 100 ‎culinary MSME owners who actively use Instagram for promotional activities. The findings reveal ‎that Instagram marketing has a positive and significant effect on business development, where ‎creative content, interactive engagement, and strategic use of features such as Stories, Reels, and ‎Instagram Ads strongly enhance sales performance, market expansion, and brand identity. The ‎study refines Social Media Marketing Theory by linking visual engagement mechanisms to ‎measurable business outcomes and provides practical implications for MSME owners and ‎policymakers seeking to promote sustainable digital transformation‎.