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Abstract

Social mediaHome-based businesses Informal economy Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Kuwait Instagram.Contribution/Originality: This study contributes to the existing literature by presenting new knowledge about informal home-based businesses and social media in Kuwait. Also, it makes an empirical contribution to home-based businesses and marketing literature by exploring the role of social media on the start-up of informal home-based businesses. This study is one of very few studies which have explored the adoption of social media platforms in informal home-based businesses in Kuwait, and it can be used as a base for future research on adopting social media platforms in informal home-based businesses in Kuwait. INTRODUCTIONSocial media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram, are rapidly proliferating in societies; these online platforms are "computer-mediated tools that make it possible for anyone to create, circulate, share, and exchange information in a variety of formats and with multiple communities" (Leonardi & Vaast, 2017).The growth of social media users is not limited to teenagers, but is also dominated by members of Generation X, (individuals who were born between the 1960s and the early 1980s) (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Improved hardware and faster wireless communication have increased the growth of smartphone industries, and the widespread use of