An exploratory investigation of social media adoption by small businesses

Wu He (), Feng-Kwei Wang (), Yong Chen () and Shenghua Zha ()
Additional contact information
Wu He: Old Dominion University
Feng-Kwei Wang: Chinese Culture University
Yong Chen: Old Dominion University
Shenghua Zha: James Madison University

Information Technology and Management, 2017, vol. 18, issue 2, No 5, 149-160

Abstract: Abstract Social media has become an online platform for businesses to market products/services and to manage customer relationships. While more and more small businesses have jumped on the bandwagon of social media in recent years, we found that only a limited number of published articles are currently available regarding the decision-making factors for social media adoption by small businesses. To understand why and how small businesses (i.e., small non-manufacturing enterprises) in the U.S. adopt social media, and for which business purposes, we conducted a case study using an approach that combined literature review, interviews, and cross-checking social media sites. In particular, we interviewed 27 small businesses as our cases in a mid-size U.S. city in terms of their social media adoption for business purposes. This study revealed some novel insights and developed a decision support model composed of factors critical to successful social media adoption by small businesses.

Keywords: Small business; Social media; Facebook; Technology adoption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10799-015-0243-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:infotm:v:18:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s10799-015-0243-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10799

DOI: 10.1007/s10799-015-0243-3

Access Statistics for this article

Information Technology and Management is currently edited by Raymond Patterson and Erik Rolland

More articles in Information Technology and Management from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().