Social Media Usage Interest as A Marketing Media Alternative for Smes During the Covid-19 Pandemic (Study on the Smes Entrepreneur Association of Banyumas Regency)

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic that occurs globally also affects the world economy, including the SMEs in Indonesia.
It shows in a quite significant sales decrease and social distancing as a way to prevent the spreading of the
virus among people. One of the alternatives that SMEs can use is by using the social media as one of the
marketing media with low cost yet effective, easy, and has lots of benefits. The purpose of this research is
to measure how far the interest of SMEs practicioners to use the marketing via social media in this COVID-
19 pandemic. The data were collected using a questionnaire with 5 points Likert scale to the SMEs
practitioner in Banyumas Regency, Central Java Province. Structural Equation Modeling with Partial Least
Square (PLS) was used to measure the causal relationship between constructs. The research result
establishes the perceived usefulness in using social media has a positive impact to the SMEs’ behavior
toward social media and eventually positively impact the SMEs’ interest in using social media as marketing
media. The managerial implication of this research is so that there will be more SMEs that use the social
media marketing to increase their market reach, improve the spread of information, and increase their
products or service sales.
Keywords: SMEs; social media marketing; technology acceptance model; social media use interest;
perceived usefulness in using social media; perceived ease of use in using social media.