Integration of Social Media Marketing in TAM Model in SME Landscape

Abstract

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) must adapt their business sustainability in light of the current circumstances if they hope to survive the epidemic. Building businesses that expose consumers to a new path for opportunity and growth is made possible by expanding the usage of technology. Similarly, online social media marketing has become increasingly important in the present business niche. However, social media marketing is still underutilised by SMEs. Social media marketing boosts revenue and competition advantage. Social media marketing is a potent tool that business management may use to aid in marketing and sales to draw people to make online purchases. To analyse the social media marketing impacting customers' purchases online, hence, the objective of this study is to propose an innovative framework by including social media marketing into the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). These social and technological play a crucial role in advancing to start up the economic recovery as we shift to the endemic phase. The present study employs convenience sampling, a non-probability sample technique, to gather responses from Malaysian online users through a questionnaire survey. This study utilised the Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) approach. A total of 392 respondents' usable questionnaires were obtained consequently. The study's findings indicated that all relationships significantly influence purchase intention on social commerce websites. Besides, the discovery of TAM revealed its role as a partial mediator between the relationships. The study emphasises the role of social media marketing to guide measuring the effectiveness of marketing technology.