Despite extensive research on social media marketing, limited attention has been paid to how institutional pressures and technological factors jointly shape small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SME) social media marketing use, particularly in developing economies, where these two theoretical perspectives have largely been examined in isolation. This study aims to address this gap by integrating institutional theory with the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to examine configurations of institutional pressures (coercive, mimetic, and normative) and technology-related factors (facilitating conditions, effort expectancy, and performance expectancy) associated with high versus low levels of social media marketing utilization among SMEs.
Data were collected from 204 SME owner-managers and analyzed using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify multiple configurations associated with high and low levels of social media marketing utilization.
The analysis reveals four configurations associated with elevated social media marketing utilization among SMEs. Notably, high utilization occurs when performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, mimetic pressure, and normative pressure are simultaneously present. Conversely, one configuration is linked to low utilization and is characterized by the absence of both technological and institutional attributes.
This study integrates UTAUT and institutional theory to explain how technological factors and institutional pressures combine to shape high and low levels of social media marketing utilization among SMEs in a developing economy. By linking technological considerations with external legitimacy and dependency pressures, the framework identifies alternative configurations associated with utilization and advances research on social media marketing and entrepreneurship.
