An examination of the factors influencing social media adoption by corporate organisations in Kenya

Abstract

Social Media is transforming the way the world does business. Today the implications are huge and the prizes are enormous for those businesses & individuals who handle it right. However a few organizations in Kenya today can actually show tangible results on their efforts on social media. Why? Most organizations jumped into the social media bandwagon without a strategy, a budget to sustain it and a dedicated social media team. This study sought to determine the factors which influence the adoption of social media by corporate organisations in Kenya, to determine the extent to which these factors influence adoption of social media in corporate organisations in Kenya and develop and validate a model for social media adoption in corporate organisations in Kenya. Various theories were reviewed in order to come up with the proposed model. These models include Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) developed by Venkatesh et al (2003) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) derived from the theory of reasoned action by Azjen and Fishbein (1980) A survey was used to collect quantitative data for this research. The population of this study comprised all the 60 companies listed in the Nairobi Securities Exchange as at 30th June 2013. A sample size of 50% of the population (or 30 firms) was selected for this study using simple random sampling technique. This study used primary data that was collected through semi-structured questionnaires that were administered to the IT managers of the corporate organisations in Kenya. The questionnaire contained questions on social media adoption by the firms in order to ascertain the adoption extent, types of social media adopted and the factors that influenced social media adoption in organisations. Pilot tests were done to help examine the validity of the instrument after which the instruments were amended accordingly. During data collection, 27 out of the 30 questionnaires were collected. Various statistical tools and protocols were used to analyse the collected data. SPSS 15 for windows was the main tool used in this research. Various statistical approaches were used in the analysis and these included: Factor analysis, Analysis of variance (ANOVA), descriptive statistics and Regression. The study found out that the most significant factor which influenced adoption of social media is relative advantage. The results from the analysis above were used to develop a framework that guides in determining the factors influencing social media adoption in corporate organizations. This framework will be important to IT managers, corporate organisations, policy makers, as well as researchers in technology and especially those interested in studying social media. Corporate organisations will understand the value of social media adoption to aid in communication purposes within the institutions as well as with the outsiders. It will aid in coming up with appropriate models to adopt technology and more specifically social media.