Factors Influencing Entrepreneurs’ Behavioral Intention to Adopt Social Media Marketing in Ethiopia
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Date
2019-10
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A.A.U.
Abstract
Social media has become a new trend for youngsters and businesses today. Tools and methods for communicating customers have changed greatly with the revelation of social media and it has become a vehicle that marketers can extend their marketing campaigns to a wider range of consumers. The purpose of this study is to discover the factors affecting the initial response of
entrepreneurs in Ethiopia regarding behavioral intention when adopting social media marketing. To determine what can influence entrepreneurs’ behavioral intention to adopt social media marketing, A ‘Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology’ (UTAUT) were used as the theoretical framework to investigate the adoption level of social media marketing as a platform among Ethiopian entrepreneurs. The four key predictor factors that influence the
acceptance of social media as a business platform are performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions. A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was adopted. The research applied a descriptive study in a quantitative research approach based on primary data. A questionnaire with 29 items was developed to collect
primary data, hence 246 questionnaires were collected. To collect the data required, an online survey has been distributed to online entrepreneurs in Ethiopia through different social media and e-mail by Google drive form software. Assumption and diagnostic tests were done to ensure the appropriateness of data to the assumptions of regression analysis, and multiple linear regressions were also applied to test the proposed hypotheses. In the end, social influence was found as a nominative determinant of entrepreneurs’ behavioral intention to adopt social media
marketing while facilitating conditions, effort expectancy and performance expectancy were also found to have positive significant association towards entrepreneurs’ behavioral intention to adopt social media marketing. These findings provide several managerial and theoretical implications, namely the ways in which behavioral intention to adopt social media marketing is
needed as taken into consideration to increase social media marketing adoption. Moreover, this study’s research model can be used for future studies on social media marketing.
Description
A Thesis Submitted to Addis Ababa University School of Graduate
Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Keywords
Behavioral Intention, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media