Abstract
•The rate of social media adoption in the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sector has remained relatively low.•Using the word of mouth, viral marketing and social presence theory.•This study will also examine the impact of social media on business performance.
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.