Social Media Tools Adoption and Use by SMES: An Empirical Study

Despite the recent increase in the adoption and use of social media tools to support firm operations, very little empirical research focusing on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been conducted to-date. The aim of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by investigating SME adoption of social media tools. In particular, we assess the impact of organizational, manager and environmental characteristics on SME utilization of the Facebook Events Page. To test our proposed research model, we administered a survey to 453 SME managers. Results of a hierarchical logistic regression indicate that firm innovativeness, firm size, manager's age and industry sector all have a significant impact on social media adoption. Implications for research and practice are discussed.