Determinants of social media use by handicraft industry of Indonesia and its impact on export and marketing performance: An empirical study

The present study attempts to examine the determinants of social media use by handicraft industry of Indonesia and its impact on export and marketing performance. The primary data has been collected from the sample of 301 respondents. To examine the impact of incorporated variables on the marketing and export performance, the Confirmatory factors analysis and Structural equation modeling approaches are incorporated in the study, as well as several tests that were applied including descriptive analysis, KMO and Bartlett's test, rotated component matrix, convergent and discriminant validity. The results show significant differences in direct and indirect effects. The direct effects indicated that perceived ease of use and subjective norm are the insignificant predictors of marketing performance, whereas, relative advantage significantly predicts marketing performance. Likewise, for export performance, perceived ease of use and relative advantage are found as significant predictors. While the indirect effects show that social media use significantly mediated the relationship of perceived ease of use, relative advantage, subjective norm and marketing performance. On the contrary, no mediation of subjective norm is observed in the relationship between subjective norm and export performance, while, social media use acts as a significant mediator in the relationship of perceived ease of use, relative advantage and export performance. Also, the study embraces several theoretical, practical and policy-making implications for the marketing management practitioners and strategy developers to attain high levels of marketing and export performance with the utilisation of social media. Lastly, various limitations have been discussed for in-depth findings by future researchers.