There have been numerous studies on the adoption of social media among individuals as well as organizations. Nevertheless, most of these studies were conducted in developed economies and focused on large organizations. This study, therefore, fills the gap by looking at the adoption of social media among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Middle East region; specifically, in the UAE. In addition, this study analyzes the adoption phenomena through word of mouth, viral marketing and social presence theory using in-depth semi-structured personal interviews with entrepreneurs of SMEs. Another significant contribution rendered by this study is its examination of social media adoption in terms of the business performance of firms.

Introduction

Social media (SM) is one of the most discussed topics in today’s business domain even though its existence can be considered quite recent. It is already leading to the reshaping of the business setting where enterprises seek to harness the power of SM as a strategic tool to improve firm value, profits, and competitive advantage (Aral and Weill, 2013). Modern organizations are expected to develop an SM presence as a vehicle for advertisements and marketing campaigns, as well as for building relationships, and a portal for information sharing, education and interaction with the networked public. Often known as the next generation of Internet-based applications or Web 2.0, a term coined by O’Reilly (2005), interactions via SM between enterprises and the public may take place on channels that include online networks, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing; microblogs, such as Twitter and Tumblr; blogs, such as Blogger and WordPress; video/photo sharing platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, and Flickr; and social bookmarking sites, such as Pinterest, Snapchat, Delicious, and Reddit. Recent studies (e.g., Agnihotri et al., 2016; McCann and Barlow, 2015; He et al., 2014; Durkin et al., 2013) have shown that SM is a useful tool that could help businesses get closer to the customers and become more competitive. Despite optimism towards SM and the popularity of the topic in the business setting, the rate of SM adoption in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector has remained relatively low because of a lack of knowledge of how to capitalize and realize the technology’s benefits (Braojos-Gomes et al., 2015; Michaelidou et al., 2011).