The Determinants of Adoption of Social Media Marketing Among SMEs in Tanzania.

Swallehe, Omary

The general objective of this study is to assess the determinants of adoption of Social Media Marketing among SMEs in Tanzania. To achieve this main objective, four specific objectives were developed, namely, to assess the extent to which technological factors influence decisions to participate in social media marketing, to examine the organizational factors influencing decisions to participate in social media marketing, to determine the business environment determinants influencing the decisions to participate in social media marketing, and to suggest measures that can enhance easy adoption of social media marketing among SMEs in Tanzania. In this study, the Resource-based theory and the diffusion of Innovation theory were used as guide. Cross-sectional survey design was used, and to obtain respondents, the author used stratified sampling technique, where a total of 98 SMEs were selected but only 90 SMEs agreed to participate in the study. Data was collected using a questionnaire, interviews and documents review, and data was presented using tables, histograms, bars and pie charts and narrated to get a coherent meaning of the findings. The findings obtained show that there are three sets of factors that determine the adoption of social media marketing among SMEs: technological factors, viz., availability of ICT infrastructure, the number of devices used to access social media, the ease-to-use of social media, the speed of the Internet services, and the affordability of the Internet services; organizational factors, viz., positive attitude of the managers and workers, the ability of workers to use social media, company expansion strategy, company financial capacity; and business environmental factors, viz., customers' pressure, competitors' pressure, and social media applications being easy to use, favorable government policies, communication policy on social media, price of the Internet services, and price of devices enabling social media application installation and use.

TANZANIA; BUSINESS expansion; ORGANIZATIONAL aims & objectives; SOCIAL marketing; SOCIAL media; DIFFUSION of innovations theory; COMMUNICATION policy; EXECUTIVES' attitudes; INTERNET speed

IUP Journal of Marketing Management, 2021, Vol 20, Issue 1, p7

0972-6845

Academic Journal