**5. Conclusions**

This study examined the current state of the use of new-media marketing among ornamental horticulture businesses. The sample of 161 businesses, while lacking in representativeness of those that are involved in new-media marketing without social media, offers insight that can be used to develop outreach programs or future research projects.

New-media marketing, with its cost structure and extensive reach, offers a game-changing opportunity, particularly for smaller businesses in ornamental horticulture industries. Studies suggest enormous potential if a new-media marketing strategy is skillfully employed. For example, the search for gardening information through the internet increased a customer's likelihood to purchase horticultural products online by 19% [5]. The task ahead is for research efforts to assist the ornamental horticulture industries in identifying the most effective practices for its members of various size and by specific business type.

As with any study, there were some limitations that should be noted. The sampling in the study was limited to those business that responded, which resulted in 161 total usable responses. This offered a reasonable amount in order to generalize to the larger population, with a confidence interval of 7.68 at a 95% confidence rate. However, there are likely some businesses who do not match the findings in this study. Future work to build on this exploratory study should seek a stratified random sample across all ornamental horticulture business types. Additionally, there were some variables that would have been valuable to the study that were left out due to survey length. These include items such as details about business-type and economic data beyond self-reported data.

**Author Contributions:** H.P., C.B., and L.B. obtained funding, designed the study, and completed manuscript writing. B.Y. planned, deployed the survey, analyzed the data, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. H.P. analyzed the data and revised the manuscript. C.B. assisted with survey deployment to stakeholders across the United States, corresponded, and finalized the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was supported by the United States Department of Agriculture—Agricultural Marketing Service—Federal State Marketing Improvement Program (number 11402984), James L. Whitten Building 1400 Independence Ave., S.W. Washington, DC 20250. Contribution no. 16-338-J from the Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station.

**Acknowledgments:** The Kansas State University Center for Rural Enterprise Engagement coordinated research, teaching, and extension activities related to this project.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
