Latino entrepreneurs and social media adoption: personal and business social network platforms

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine both the Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ social media adoption (SMA) for business purposes and the influence of culture on personal versus business social network platform (SNP) selection. Design/methodology/approach The Technology Acceptance Model’s (TAM) factors of perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU) as drivers of Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ social network platform selection are examined as well as the effect of SMA on revenue. Data was collected from 633 small business owners across the United States via an online survey administered in English and Spanish. Findings Results indicate that Latino/Hispanic business owners use personal SNP more than business SNP for business purposes. PU and PEU were not found to predict personal SNP for Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs. However, for Non-Latino/Hispanics, PU was significant while PEU was marginally significant. Findings for PU and PEU as predictors of business SNP indicate similar results for both Latino/Hispanic and non-Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs, where only PEU was significant. Finally, there was no relationship between either business or personal SNP and revenue for either Latino/Hispanic or non-Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs. Practical implications This research provides more insight into Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ self-directed engagement in personal SNP (Facebook) and business SNP (LinkedIn) for business purposes and invites future research in this population to further examine cultural influence and business performance. The findings support the need for Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ strengthening their competency in social media usage to remain competitive, as doing so will enhance their capability for building customer relationships, brand development, and equity financing. Originality/value This investigation 1) examines SMA’s role in Latino/Hispanic small and medium enterprises (SMEs); 2) distinguishes between personal and business social network platforms; 3) investigates TAM’s relevance for Latino/Hispanic entrepreneurs’ use of social media for business; and 4) explores SME social media usage as a predictor of revenue. We seek to provide practitioners with a greater understanding of how they may influence business success and sustainability through better competency development and usage of social media platforms.

Explaining Social Media Adoption for a Business Purpose: An Application of the UTAUT Model

“…To cope with large-scale corporations, entrepreneurs can exploit the technology of social media as an important instrument to establish customer relationships and a quicker and cheaper communication other than face-to-face communication. Take Facebook, as it delivers a capability to focus on niche markets with lower expenditure than traditional media [4]. Facebook users are increasingly using the site to conduct commercial activities, by posting advertisements in groups and then buying or selling items from each other [5].…”

Using UTAUT Model to Predict Social Media Adoption among Indonesian SMEs

“…Some previous research on social media in SMEs including the effect of social media on performance [5][6][7][8][9][10] social media for SMEs knowledge management [11]; social media for recruitment in SMEs [12]; and social media as tool for facilitating knowledge creation and innovation in SMEs [13]. Some previous studies also looked at factors that influenced social media adoption in SMEs [6,14,15,16,17,10,18]. Most of the research was carried out in developed countries [5,19,20,21,15,16,17,18,22] and only few research has been done in developing countries [6,14,18], where no one has used the UTAUT model approach in predicting the factors of social media adoption.…”

“…Some previous studies also looked at factors that influenced social media adoption in SMEs [6,14,15,16,17,10,18]. Most of the research was carried out in developed countries [5,19,20,21,15,16,17,18,22] and only few research has been done in developing countries [6,14,18], where no one has used the UTAUT model approach in predicting the factors of social media adoption. We see that very little research has focused their studies on SME entrepreneurs' intentions to adopt social media to market their products using UTAUT model as a vacancy or research gap that needs to be investigated further.…”

The Role of Social Media in Business Transformation Strategies (Development and Validation of the Social Media Commerce Model)

“…Statista reports that in 2017, there were 2.46 billion social media users (Figure 1) [2,3]. Social media can be classified into blogs, social networking sites, virtual social worlds, collaborative projects, communities and virtual gaming worlds [4]. There are indications that explain the role of social media increasingly varied, not only limited to tools for social communication [5], but also began to be used for business purposes.…”

“…It is important to understand why and how social media was adopted for business and for what purpose [11]. Gavino et al see further research on relevant and validated measurements of the impact of social media use on business performance and corporate income [4]. Lockett found that SME businesses generally do not have the tools and strategies for using social media [10].…”