An Initiative to Measure the impact of Social Media Adoption on Bumiputera Micro-Entrepreneurs' Business Performance: A Conceptual Paper

Abstract

Pandemic COVID-19 has changed the business landscape dramatically. Many large business and corporate sectors are able to adapt to the change but the micro-entrepreneurs continue their struggling to adapt to the change. Due to the movement restrictions while battling with COVID-19, businesses are forced to switch from conventional brick-and-mortar business to digital business application involving developing their own e-commerce sites. The emerging social media in society provides opportunity for the micro-enterprises to virtually engage with their customers. The social media has now become one of the important business tools for marketing, branding, networking and developing the business strategy. Despite of the active social media involvement among the micro-entrepreneurs, the outcome of the social media activities is still at its infancy. Micro-entrepreneurs especially the Bumiputeras have still not fully utilized the social media as their business tool. Micro-entrepreneurs lack the knowledge on how to interpret the social media platform analysis tools such as site traffic, post engagement, post impressions and others. Therefore, it is necessary to further study of degree social media adoption among the Bumiputera micro-entrepreneurs and how it affects the business performance. A quantitative method is proposed for this study by considering the existing UTAUT variables like performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions. This paper proposes a conceptual research model based on the underpinning theory and aim to measure the outcome from adoption of social media on Bumiputera micro-entrepreneurs' business performance.