Facebook represents an extremely efficient medium for helping people communicate more efficiently with their friends, families and coworkers. Although Facebook appears to have significant potential for SME marketing, it is not clear if mere personal usage of Facebook by SME owners can lead to commercial usage by the same individuals. Potential for usage of Facebook for SME marketing depends upon Facebook.com understanding the important user characteristics that influence SME owners to adopt this innovative medium for marketing purposes. An empirical study was conducted to investigate the extent to which domain-specific innovativeness explains the conditions under which SME owners move from personal users of Facebook to using Facebook for business purposes. A conceptual model is developed, based on the literature. The model was tested using survey data covering 283 SME owners in Hong Kong. Results of this study, regardless of gender, support the viewpoint that there are significant positive influences of personal usage of Facebook and domain-specific innovativeness on usage of Facebook in business. The results also support the moderating effect of domain-specific innovativeness on the relationship between personal and business usage of Facebook.
Facebook represents an extremely efficient medium for helping people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. Although the emergence of Facebook appears to have significant potential for SME marketing, it is not clear if mere personal use of Facebook by SEM owners leads to the commercial use of Facebook by these same individuals. The potential use of Facebook for SME marketing indicates that Facebook.com must understand the important user characteristics that will influence SME owners to adopt this innovative medium for marketing purposes. An empirical study was conducted to investigate the extent to which domain-specific innovativeness explains the conditions under which SME owners move from personal users of Facebook to adoption of Facebook for their own business. A conceptual model is developed from the literature. The model was tested using survey data from 283 SME owners in Hong Kong. The results of this study, regardless of the gender, support the viewpoint that there are significant positive influences of personal Facebook use and domain-specific innovativeness on adoption of Facebook in business. The results also support the moderating effect of domain-specific innovativeness on the relationship between personal Facebook use and adoption of Facebook in business.