Elucidating the Factors Affecting Entrepreneurs’ Intention to Adopt Social Media in Their Business: A Perspective from Indonesia

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to identify the factors that influence the incorporation of social media into business activities by Indonesian Millennial. In Indonesia, although the adoption of social media can bring many advantages for the business, only a small portion of Indonesia's small and medium enterprises have fully utilized social media in their business. Most of them only use social media only to market or showcase their product. Meanwhile, only 15% of them have used social media in the selling and transaction process. This is unfortunate as it has been proven that the adoption of social media in the business can help SMEs in day-to-day operation, as well as help them to escalate their business performance. Theoretical Framework: The integration of UTAUT and TAM models was employed to understand entrepreneurs' intentions in applying social media to their businesses. Performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence were proposed as the predictor of attitude toward using social media in business, which in turn would influence the intention to adopt social media in business. Design/Method/Approach: This study employed the conclusive research design, specifically descriptive research design, as the objective of the research is to examine the relationship between proposed antecedents and the outcome variable. Three hundred and sixty-two valid responses were acquired through an online survey. PLS-SEM analysis was then conducted to test proposed research hypotheses using smartPLS software. Findings: From the hypotheses testing, it is found that all proposed predictors were proven to be able to affect social media adoption intention, in which social influence was found to contribute the most. This study emphasizes the importance of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and attitude in encouraging the adoption of social media in business for millennial entrepreneurs in Indonesia. This study also gives insight to the Government or policy maker regarding how to use these factors in designing the strategy to increase social media adoption in millennials business in Indonesia.