Factors Influencing the Adoption of Online Marketing among Malaysian SMEs

Abstract

In today's global economy, using online marketing and Internet has become an imperative move to improve business operations. However, due to limited technical diffusion and the fact that the majority of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia do not engage in research and development (R&D) activities, SMEs are still lagging behind in adopting this modern technology. Therefore, there is a need to investigate SMEs in terms of their extent of online marketing adoption and factors influencing their adoption of online marketing. A quantitative survey was conducted on 80 selected SMEs in Malaysia. The study found that the proposed framework could be used to assess the degree of online marketing adoption among SMEs. The adoption of online marketing among SMEs was rather high. Specifically, the findings demonstrated that compatibility, complexity and trialability significantly influenced adoption of online marketing. However, the adoption of online marketing was not affected by relative advantage and observability. This study further concluded compatibility was the most important factor which influenced SMEs in adopting internet marketing.