Open AccessThe Examination of Factors Influencing Saudi Small Businesses’ Social Media Adoption, by Using UTAUT Model
Author(s) -
Abeer Bin Humaid,
Yasser Musa Ibrahim
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of business administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1923-4015
pISSN - 1923-4007
DOI - 10.5430/ijba.v10n2p96
Subject(s) - unified theory of acceptance and use of technology , moderation , expectancy theory , social media , marketing , social influence , business , salient , government (linguistics) , small business , construct (python library) , psychology , social psychology , political science , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , law , programming language
Social media is becoming a major development in electronic commerce among a wide range of sectors, for example, education, government, health care, and business. In Saudi Arabia, a major movement toward social media has taken place, especially among small business entrepreneurs, due to its low cost and the powerful role it can play in globalization.The goal of this paper is to add to the theoretical knowledge base regarding the adoption of social media among Saudi small businesses, by applying the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to examine the influences of Saudi small businesses’ social media adoption. An empirical study was carried out using online survey research among 73 Saudi business entrepreneurs. The major findings of the paper are that Saudi small business entrepreneurs tend to use social media for the major constructs of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions. However, although the moderator of gender proved to be effective on the construct of effort expectancy, the effects of the moderators of age, gender, and experience on the other major constructs were not salient.It is believed that the findings will be useful for understanding adoption phenomena better, to help business entrepreneurs to make superior decisions based on them.