Adoption of Social Media Marketing in the Higher Education Industry in Malaysia. An Empirical Study

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Information Management, , language: English, abstract: With the introduction of personal computers, the Internet, and e-commerce have in fact created a tremendous impact on how businesses operate and market their products or services nowadays. The introduction of social media technology is accelerating and has become a trend for youngster and business partner today. The purpose of this study was to investigate how social media marketing was implemented and adopted in the higher education institutions in Malaysia. Specifically, this study focused on the positive influence of using social media marketing and the benefits the Social Media Marketing system had provided to institutions which had accepted and utilized this new innovation. This study also aimed to determine the concern factors of adopting the Social Media Marketing system into current company management systems. An integral part of this research was to develop and to empirically test a model of the adoption of Social Media Marketing in the context of higher education institutions in Malaysia which based on the concepts of Rogers [2003] the Innovations Diffusion Theory (IDT), and Ajzen and Fishbein [1975] the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). This research used a questionnaire to assess the higher education institutions in Malaysia on their cognition and perspective of the relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability of the Social Media Marketing; as well as to assess their attitudes and subjective norm toward their behavioral intentions of using the Social Media Marketing system. Research findings revealed the attributes of innovations mentioned above were significantly positively associated with the adoption of Social Media Marketing. According to the research results, managerial implications and opportunities for future research were discussed.

Dr. Wee P. Leong has been involved in the field of education for more than 30 years. He has been a Principal, Head of Academics, International Business Director, and Director of Operations, as well as a member of the teaching faculty at private colleges and universities in Malaysia. His current research interests focus on Risk Management, Human Resource Management and criminology. He has also supervised more than 100 students in their dissertation at the MBA level.