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Online social media has become an important marketing communication tool for entrepreneurs and their customers because of its ability to simplify various constraints in the communication process. Online social media allows entrepreneurs to access customers, suppliers, partners and other necessary resources that were not easily reachable before at significantly lower costs. Therefore, the current study aims to examine entrepreneurs’ motivations, expected benefits and intentions to use online social media in an emerging market.

This study used a quantitative approach to investigate the entrepreneurs’ online social media use behaviors. Data are collected from n = 368 entrepreneurial organizations using structured questionnaires and personal interviews. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) along with structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the hypothesized relationships in the conceptual model.

Results from the data analyses show that entrepreneurs’ perceptions about efforts needed, performance expectations and various social influences helped explain a significant proportion of the variation in entrepreneurs’ intentions to use online social media. All hypotheses tested in the study were confirmed.

Efforts need to be spent on developing positive entrepreneurial attitudes toward online social media usage. As social media becomes more integrated with personal and business life, entrepreneurs need to use social networking sites to build relationships with existing customers or to reach new customers. A larger and more representative sample would have improved generalizability of the findings about entrepreneurial use of online social media. Future research studies should consider using additional independent measures to validate the study results.

This study contributes to the entrepreneurial literature by providing empirical evidence for the link between entrepreneurs’ perceptions and attitudes about social media and their intentions to use it in an emerging market. Additionally, entrepreneurs need to expend more effort in understanding and effectively using social media and should develop positive attitudes toward online social media. Entrepreneurs’ feelings, perceptions and efforts need to be nurtured through support from online social media providers, educational institutions and local chapters of business organizations (i.e. SBA, Chamber of Commerce) alike.

This research is one of the few studies that has attempted to examine the effects of various antecedent factors in the context of entrepreneurs’ intentions to use online social media for business purposes in an emerging market. This study contributes to the entrepreneurial literature by providing empirical evidence for the link between entrepreneurs’ perceptions and attitudes about social media and their intentions to use it in an emerging market. Additionally, this study contributes to our understanding about the role of social influences, effort and performance expectancies on the formation of entrepreneurial intentions to use social media.

Many studies have examined the use of social media by either customers or firms, especially in developed markets. However, little is known about why young individual entrepreneurs use digital channels (DCs) as business platforms in emerging markets (EMs) and how they integrate them into their marketing activities. This paper aims to try filling this gap.

Given the exploratory nature of this research, the authors employ a qualitative approach based on a focus group (12 participants) and semi-structured interviews (8 participants) with young entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. The authors adopted a deductive thematic analysis based on pre-determined theoretical frameworks to analyse and interpret the data.

The authors found that the young entrepreneurs mainly used Instagram, Snapchat and, to a moderate extent, YouTube as digital marketing channels for advertising purposes. However, they used WhatsApp for establishing direct contact and personalising communication with customers. The entrepreneurs used these channels because they are useful, easy to use, cost-effective, fun and widely used by local customers. The authors also found that the entrepreneurs used social media and offline channels conjointly in three main marketing activities (communication/promotion, transactions and customer service) to boost the customer purchasing process. The complementarity of social media and offline channels was found to improve brand visibility, enlarge markets and strengthen the customer relationship. However, the achievement of these benefits varied across small firms depending on the entrepreneurs' abilities in coordinating multiple channels and according to the distinctiveness of their businesses.

This study contributes to the entrepreneurial literature by extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to explain the motives behind the use of DCs amongst individual entrepreneurs. Furthermore, this paper proposes a novel theoretical framework for studying the interaction between online and offline marketing channels during the purchasing process. Through this framework, the study provides new insights into channel coordination and multi-channel customer behaviours from the entrepreneur's perspective.

This study helps understand why small firms use different DCs. Likewise, it shows how young entrepreneurs coordinate online/offline channels in a complementary manner. The findings could also help in designing appropriate programmes encouraging young entrepreneurs to use online channels and social media to enhance their business activities.

This study offers a novel attempt at explaining the use of DCs and their interaction with traditional channels from the entrepreneur's perspective and brings new insights to why and how young entrepreneurs use DCs in an emerging market.

Social media facilitates the communication and the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients. However, limited research has examined the role of social media in a physicians' online return. This study, therefore, investigates physicians' online economic and social capital return in relation to physicians' use of social media and consumer engagement.

Using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with fixed effects (FE) and panel data collected from Sina Weibo and Sina Health, this study analyzes the impact of physicians' social media use and consumer engagement on physicians' online return and the moderation effect of professional seniority.

The results reveal that physicians' use of social media and consumer sharing behavior positively affect physicians' online economic return. In contrast, consumer engagement positively impacts physicians' online social capital return. While professional seniority enhances the effect of physicians' social media use on online economic return, professional seniority only enhances the relationship between consumers' sharing behavior to the posts and physicians' online social capital return when professional seniority comes to consumer engagement.

This study reveals the different roles of social media use and consumer engagement in physicians' online return. The results also extend and examine the social media affordances theory in online healthcare communities and social media platforms.

The bystander effect is one of the most well researched and replicated phenomena in social psychology. It repeatedly shows that the presence of other people inhibits the impulse to help due to the concept of diffusion of responsibility. Recently, researchers have studied this phenomenon online in the context of e-mails, internet chat rooms, and discussion forums. The results provide evidence that the presence of “virtual” others decreases the likelihood of helping behavior. Personalization is another factor that strongly influences helping behavior. Referring to a person by name when soliciting help request increases the likelihood of receiving assistance. Yet, with the most popular activity on the internet now being social media, it would be beneficial to know if diffusion of responsibility and personalization also occurs in this part of the online world. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To investigate the validity of diffusion of responsibility as well as personalization in a social media context, 176 participants sent out one private Facebook message soliciting help in the form of an online survey to one, three, six, or nine of their Facebook friends. They greeted their friend(s) by name or just said “Hi” or “Hi all.”

Responses to the survey provided strong support for personalizing the greeting, but did not support the theory of diffusion of responsibility.

This study has many practical implications. For one, with social media being used not only by individuals but by businesses and industries, it is important to know the most effective way in eliciting help and responses from individuals. It is also beneficial for researchers as well who are increasingly using social media as a recruitment tool to find participants. This study suggests that personalizing salutations is an effective way of eliciting more responses and raises important research questions about the validity of diffusion of responsibility in online environments.

This study also has originality and value in that it provides a start for understanding helping behavior in a social media environment as well as applying relevant social psychological theories to online behavior. It highlights the similarities as well as differences between offline and online human behavior as well as highlights the importance of personalization in online requests.

This paper aims to investigate the impacts of social media on the Pakistani consumers' buying behavior, which could be reflected in either complex buying, variety seeking, dissonance reducing or habitual buying. Entrepreneurs need to know how their loyal and prospective customers feel, think and how do they decide on purchasing certain products and services.

The self-administered online questionnaire is used to collect feedback from consumers in order to analyze the data and come up with the findings. A sample size of 396 respondents was used to analyze and find a relationship between social media and consumer buying behavior.

Social media is found to have a partially significant impact on Pakistani consumers' buying behavior; word of mouth and content credibility are the two factors that influence Pakistani consumers' buying behavior. Pakistani consumers, below the age of 40, possess more complex buying behavior, which alerts entrepreneurs to consider it for their future marketing strategies.

Entrepreneurs should make an effort to be differentiated from others while keeping customers aware of the products they provide. In addition, customers should not spend too much time when comparing brands; rather, businesses should make it more captive.

This paper provides different results in comparison to the previous studies, in terms of the factors influencing consumers' buying behavior.

The use of social media is becoming increasingly important for entrepreneurial marketing as a way to gain psychological empowerment through female entrepreneurship. The participation of female entrepreneurs on social media has witnessed an increasing trend. The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of social media participation on female entrepreneurs towards digital entrepreneurship intention and their psychological empowerment.

This cross-sectional study integrates the Stimulus–Organism–Response framework with uses and gratification theory to understand and determine a theoretical framework in understanding the importance of social media for female entrepreneurship in the contemporary digital era. To ensure internal consistency of the latent constructs, this study determines Cronbach’s alpha for all the variables. Further, exploratory factor analysis is performed to ensure the unidimensionality of the latent constructs. Structural equation modelling is performed to test the theoretical framework.

Data analysis confirms the significant effect of social media participations on female entrepreneurs towards their digital entrepreneurship intention which further affects their psychological empowerment.

The practical contributions of this study highlight the importance of female entrepreneurship which is essential for attaining self-reliance by reducing the socio-economic barriers. Further, female entrepreneurs’ participation in social media communities enhances the levels of empowerment.

Drawing on the example of car manufacturer Tesla and its early investor Elon Musk, the purpose of this paper is to explore the connection between the personal communication activities of influential entrepreneurs on social media, the emergence of parasocial interactions (PSIs) and the related communication outcomes for the company.

This paper conducted an online survey, recruiting 207 participants via purposive sampling. Partial least square path modeling and an independent t-test were conducted to test hypotheses.

The results of this paper show that following entrepreneurs’ personal social media activities amplifies PSIs, which in turn positively impact the company's communication outcomes. Organization–public relationships and purchase intentions are improved by PSI.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies that connects the personal and the organizational level in exploring entrepreneurial marketing. The results show that Elon Musk acts as an influential entrepreneur to effectively promote communication outcomes for Tesla. This paper illuminates the potential of entrepreneurs’ personal social media activities to support the success of their ventures.

This paper investigates the degree to which self-selection explains the apparent higher purchase value of research shoppers.

An online survey was administered to 594 retail shoppers. The purchase value of research shoppers and single-channel shoppers was compared before and after propensity score matching to account for self-selection effects.

Prior to matching, research shoppers spend significantly more than single-channel shoppers. This difference persists after accounting for self-selection but is reduced by 25%. The impact of self-selection differs across product categories and channels, with the online channel most likely to lead to higher purchase value.

The findings build on existing literature on the value of omni-channel retail strategies and provide insights for retailers to determine the likely impact of encouraging research shopping among their customers.

The research provides important insights into the role that self-selection plays in the value of multi-channel shoppers, and the likely value to retailers of omni-channel strategies.

This paper outlines the development of a validated questionnaire for assessing information security behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to present data from the questionnaire validation process and the quantitative study results.

Data obtained through a quantitative survey (N = 263) at a South African university were used to validate the questionnaire.

Exploratory factor analysis produced 11 factors. Cronbach’s alpha for the 11 factors were all above 0.7, suggesting that the questionnaire is valid and reliable. The responses show that autonomy questions received positive perception, followed by competence questions and lastly relatedness questions. The correlation analysis results show that there was a statistically significant relationship between competence factors and autonomy factors. There was a partial significant relationship between autonomy and relatedness factors, and between competence and relatedness factors. The study results suggest that competence and autonomy could be more important than relatedness in fostering information security behaviour among employees.

This study used a convenience sampling, a cross-sectional design, and was carried out in a single organisation. This could pose limitations when generalising the study results. Future studies could use random sampling and consider other universities for further validation.

Universities can use the questionnaire to identify developmental areas to improve information security from a behaviour perspective.

This paper provides a research instrument for assessing information security behaviour from the perspective of the self-determination theory.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) within an entrepreneurial community engage in cross-promotion on social media via Facebook. This paper specifically examines how SME community members leverage their horizontal and vertical ties to generate publicity, improve brand perceptions and drive traffic to themselves or community events.

This paper uses a qualitative approach, examining 1,025 Facebook posts from 27 members of an entrepreneurial community in the southeast USA to develop typologies of posting strategies, post purposes and post functions.

This paper finds that in the entrepreneurial community of interest, many members engage in cross-promotion via social media at various frequencies and with distinctive purposes. This paper identifies five distinct patterns of cross-promotion – quality signaling, traffic driving, community amplifying, hybrid cross-promotion and infrequent engagement. This paper also notes differences between cross-promotional strategies of vertical and horizontal partners.

This paper advances understanding of social media marketing and identifies key patterns of SME social media behavior. Although previous research has noted the importance of social media for SMEs, there has been little research regarding posting strategies being used by these firms. Further, to this point, there has not been a framework to understand how firms can use social media to cross-promote one another. This paper seeks to begin filling these gaps by providing a useful framework that can be used by SMEs in coordinating their social media posting strategies as well as by researchers studying SME cross-promotion.