Customers as Major Influencers in Adopting Digital Marketing: A Study on Malaysian Small and Medium Enterprises

HRMARS - Digital marketing through social media facilitates small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners to market via their online presence in reaching out target audiences. In addition, customers are currently of more information technology (IT) savvy and use social media networks widely in their daily activities such as socialising, researching, entertaining, online shopping, and trading. Thus, SME owners could take this opportunity to have online presence in attracting customers’ attention and awareness that may turn them into purchasers. Moreover, customers would be able to provide their feedbacks on SME owners’ products and services as a ‘check and balance’ for long-term improvement in reaching business sustainability in their respective industries. Despite the usefulness of social media networks, it can be seen that SME owners are still preferred to do the traditional way when engaging with their customers, and that social media networks are seen as the secondary platform in reaching their audiences. In this research, SME owners are taken as the unit of observation and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is applied as the underpinning theory. A total of six SME owners from apparel industry are the participants. This research utilises a qualitative research method. The data were collected through multiple case studies via an in-depth interview with SME owners. The apparel industry was chosen because it has potentials in generating income for the country in the global market. Moreover, many Malaysian entrepreneurs could be more competitive in the global market through online presence. The data collected were transcribed, translated, and coded before it was uploaded into Atlas.ti software and analysed in obtaining the final results.