Factors Influence Malaysian Small-Medium Enterprise to Engage in Facebook Marketing

Abstract

Social media plays an important role as a marketing tool to promote Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs’) businesses. Among the social media platforms, Facebook is the preferred advertisement tool for SMEs. It is because Facebook provides more features for SMEs to communicate with their customers such as by using direct messenger, comments, like, and share. SMEs engage in social media to lower the cost of advertisements, attract new customers through online contact, improve the interaction with customers or customer engagement, and create brand awareness of the company. Most of the past research has focused on the value of brand awareness and customer engagement on Facebook, however, there is a limited amount of research related to the value of cost-efficiency and attracting a new customer base especially in a developing country like Malaysia. As such, this study reviews the literature on social media marketing and factors influencing Malaysian SMEs to engage in Facebook online marketing. This study also proposes a conceptual framework on the factors influencing Malaysian SMEs to engage in Facebook online marketing.