Keywords

1 Introduction

Globally women’s empowerment awareness got considerable importance. This issue documented the benefits of the empowerment that can be attained through the effective participation of women. In this context, Bangladesh is one of the most uprising successful countries of women empowerment. Bangladeshi women’s participation in the workplace increasing as a leader to compare with the ratio of male and female. Women being half of the population, who are emerging the sustainable economic development through empowerment efforts. The concept of women empowerment and efforts in this area to attain steady progress in gender equality, which assisted Bangladesh to achieve first place in gender equality (among South Asian countries) in the Gender Gap Index of 2020 [1]. To sustain this achievement, women’s equivalent rights are now distinct to women’s economic empowerment. The most successful Bangladeshi women in empowerment came through small entrepreneurship. This emerging platform enhances women’s economic freedom. Most importantly, the appearance of women entrepreneurship became a new phenomenon for sustainable development which contribute to the national economy [2]. Their positive association with the workplace and leadership upraising gender equality, and moving Bangladesh towards a middle-income country status [3].

Social media grounded great opportunity for Bangladeshi rural educated women entrepreneurs’. This web-based communication platform bridges people and organizations [4]. Mangold and Faulds [5] identified that social media connect existing and potential customers with entrepreneurs’ offers. Moreover, social media as a marketing tool allows companies to associate with new product innovation research, connect with the community to get more business opportunities. Small entrepreneurs’ adopted new strategies to utilize these new media channels to communicate with their consumers. Additionally, country-wise information technology implementation by the government also plays an important role in Bangladeshi women entrepreneurs [2, 6]. Easy access to the internet transforming social media as an E-commerce platform, which engages people buying and selling of goods and services through virtual storefronts [2]. Where 93.681 million use mobile internet [7] in Bangladesh. Moreover, 35 million users actively use Facebook for social networking [8]. Thus, the live features of Facebook became an influencing marketing tool for social media base entrepreneurs [9]. Accordingly, this study aims to examine the antecedents of Facebook live towards women entrepreneurs social media virtual store establishment intention.

However, few studies have been examined the usage behavior of social media in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Most of the current studies so far have examined the consumer side of social media adoption, the entrepreneurs’ adoption of social media remained largely under-researched [10,11,12,13,14]. This paper aims to examine the factors which influencing Bangladeshi women to use social media for online business by extending new constructs related to entrepreneurship setup. Furthermore, the technology compatibility, brand awareness, and consumer relationship analyzed towards Perceived Usefulness of social media acceptance for small entrepreneurship. Additionally, how social media ease of use and usefulness contributing to the entrepreneurs’ intention also has focused on this study. This paper purposes a new dimension of capability, brand awareness and consumer relationship to fill the research gap through the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The remainder of his article is organized as follows: the subsequent section of this paper provides a theoretical background and literature review of entrepreneurship and social media with TAM. Next section followed by the methodology and results. Lastly, it discusses the findings and implications of the study presented.

2 Review of Literature and Hypotheses Development

2.1 Compatibility

Compatibility refers to the extent of users’ current values, practices, and needs. [15]. This has been measured as a vital factor for innovation acceptance [16]. A number of investigations evidenced the positive and negative impact of compatibility on technology adoption [17,18,19,20]. Ainin et al. [18] found that compatibility of Facebook using by small and medium enterprises has significant influence and they mentioned the adopter’s current values, practices, and needs towards the technology. Numerous study verified the compatibility as a significant factor which influences the adoption of social media through consistent relation with small entrepreneurship business [21,22,23]. Therefore, in order to investigate the relationship of compatibility with perceived usefulness, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H1: Compatibility has a positive significant effect on perceived usefulness towards social media acceptance for live marketing.

2.2 Brand Awareness

Brand awareness defines consumers’ ability to identify, recall, and recognize a brand [24]. One of the eldest explanations of Brand awareness is the aptitude to identify the brand under diverse circumstances [25]. Building brand awareness and marketing is the foremost challenge faced by SMEs. Limited financial resources restrict the efforts of SMEs to continue promotional activity to the mass level. Furthermore, they have to compete with large business organizations simultaneously [26]. In these circumstances, social media brand awareness enhances its brand value and equity towards potential consumers. Effective use of social media could give a competitive advantage of brand awareness [27]. Using this platform SMEs can connect with consumers at the right time, can offer lower costs and solve the problem with higher efficiency than other outdated communication tools [28]. A number of studies confirmed the association of social media utilization of brand awareness [27, 29, 30]. Consequently, this study proposed the following hypothesis-

H2: Brand awareness has a positive influence on Perceived Usefulness towards social media acceptance for live marketing.

2.3 Consumer Relationship

The notion of relationships increasingly common in the discussion for brand development between customers and brands in order to clarify consumer behavior [31]. Consumer relationship (CR) is the most frequently analyzed characteristic in the field of interpersonal relationships that creates a link to the brand equity [31]. CR becomes the key indicator of business strategies and tools for improving the right product for the consumer to build a better image of the entrepreneur [32]. This approach provides more opportunities for entrepreneurs to know more about their consumers [33, 34]. Moreover, customers can get an opinion on specific products or services, and they can purchase from online store to reduce time. In line with this discussion, this study formulate the following hypothesis to investigate how Facebook live marketing enhances entrepreneurs relationship with consumers:

H3: Consumer relationship has a positive significant effect on Perceived Usefulness towards social media acceptance for Facebook live marketing.

2.4 Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

TAM was developed by Davis (1989b) to identify user acceptance behavior. This theory was shaped by the inspiration of the Theory of Reasoned Action [36] from the field of social psychology to explain a person’s behavior intentions. TAM used to investigate the factors affecting user behaviors about using information technology or adopting new technology. The intention is determined by two constructs: individual attitudes toward the behavior and social norm of individuals or a specific group would approve or disprove of the behavior. Correspondingly, Davis [38] introduced the constructs in the original TAM as follows: perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), attitude, and behavioral intention and actual to use. TAM specifies links between two key constructs: perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEOU) towards attitudes, intentions and actual use. These two specific variables (PU and PEOU) have been hypothesized to the fundamental determinants of user acceptance of the technology [38]. The TAM is currently extensively accepted by different study settings [39, 40]. Among the concepts, PU and PEOU form the consumer’s beliefs on technology and therefore predict his or her attitude toward the technology, which in turn predicts its acceptance. Within the wider field of information systems investigation, the TAM is proposed as a cognitive context that explains how PEOU and PU impact on individual usage intentions [35]. In this study, we contribute to the discipline by examining the role of individual entrepreneurs’ perceptions of different aspects of using social media (Facebook live feature) as the antecedents to TAM’s cognitive aspects. Focussing on social media extents of compatibility, consumer relationship, brand awareness to examine entrepreneurship acceptance through the extended TAM.

Perceived Ease of Use

Perceived ease of use (PEOU) refers to a person believes of using a specific technology [41]. The ease of use describes the increase of the performance with less strength and allowing more work done by the same effort [42]. This clarifies the user’s awareness of the effort compulsory to use the system. Davis (1989b) defined PEOU as “the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would be free of effort the word from ease”. PEOU is a vital factor in the use of technology along with perceived usefulness in TAM [41]. This construct has been widely used to explain the user’s adoption of the system or technology [44]. The user-centric application is one of the influencing factors to perceived ease. Simple design, service navigation, and user interaction should be intuitive for first-time users for the targeted audience of the small business in the social media site [45]. In the context of social media utilization for small business development, a number of studies found the positive influence of PEOU on PU [46,47,48]. Consequently, this study suggested the following hypotheses:

H4: Perceived Ease of Use has a positive influence on Perceived Usefulness towards social media live acceptance for entrepreneurship marketing.

H5: Perceived Ease of Use has a positive and significant influence on intention towards social media live acceptance for entrepreneurship marketing.

Perceived Usefulness

Perceived usefulness (PU) is defined as persons believe that using a particular technology will enhance his or her job performance [38]. PU describes the user’s sensitivity to the extent that technology will expand the user’s workplace performance [35]. This means the consumer has an acuity of the usefulness of the technology for performing a specific activity which confirms decreasing the time for doing the job more accurately. A number of studies showed that PU has an influence on the PEU which, then, leads to the actual usage [35, 45, 48]. Furthermore, the association between the PU and the intention to use in the context of the TAM is statistically supported [49]. This study examines the PU relationship for continuous intention to perform social media-live activities for small entrepreneurship marketing. In the context of entrepreneurs’ social media acceptance for SMEs’ development, few studies have been found [18, 48, 50]. According to the following discussions, this study considers PU as a construct of the research model and hypothesized as follow:

H6: Perceived usefulness has a positive significant effect on intention towards social media acceptance for live marketing.

Intention

User intention to use social media is the key factor in building technology utilization models [41, 50]. According to Davis [41] intention reflects a decision that the person has made about whether to perform a behavior or not. Intention predicts the actual usage of a particular skill which leads to attitude formation [51]. Adoption signifies an assurance or continued usage of the technology over time. In the context of TAM, behavioral intention to use is the precursor of actual usage of computer technology. Numerous empirical studies confirm the intention-behavior relationship found that intention is a good predictor of behavior [45, 52, 53]. This study operationalizes intention as continuous using social media for entrepreneurship marketing activities [36]. Consequently, intention designates a more stable mental status of entrepreneurs using the behavior of social media. The intention of using social media live feature for entrepreneurship marketing is a cognitive representation of the user’s readiness for actual use. Previous studies confirmed the importance of intention for entrepreneurship development [48, 50, 54].

3 Methodology

3.1 Sampling and Data Collection

The participants for this study are SME owners in Bangladesh who use Facebook for their business. Considering the context of the study, it is essential to find the key informants of the decision-makers of SMEs. This stud focused on recruiting actual social media base entrepreneurship business owner participants who ensure accurate and rich information regarding social media adoption among Bangladeshi SMEs. The identified candidates were contacted and provided with detailed information about the study and the participation process through Facebook. From the Facebook search, 400 female entrepreneurs were selected as potential samples. An online survey was conducted to collect data. A total of 293 surveys was collected from the participants, of which 283 were found to be usable in the data analysis. These valid responses were analyzed to assess reliability, validity, and appropriateness for hypotheses testing.

3.2 Measurement

The study constructs were operationalized adopting items from earlier empirical studies. Previous research was reviewed to ensure that a comprehensive list of measures was included. Measurements for perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived usefulness (PU), intention to use (INT) was developed from the study of Davis [41]. Measurements for compatibility (COM), Brand awareness (BA), Consumer Relationship (CR), were developed from Ainan [18], Sasmita and Suki [55], Langaro, Rita, and Salgueiro [56], Y. Wang and Lo [34], Morgan, Slotegraaf, and Vorhies [57] respectively. Each item was measured on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from ‘‘strongly disagree’’ (1) to ‘‘strongly agree’’ (5).

3.3 Data Analysis

The proposed theoretical framework was analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) as suggested by Anderson and Gerbing [58]. SEM methods were employed to analyze the relationships among the constructs within the latent and observed variables using multiple indicators. The validity and reliability of the construct were assessed by using the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and, later on, hypothesis and model fit were measured by using the ‘covariance-based structural equation modeling’ approach by SPSS V.24 & AMOS V.22 respectively (Table 1).

Table 1. Demographics of respondents
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4 Results

4.1 Measurement Model: Reliability and Validity

At first, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was applied to measures the validity and reliability of the constructs. Before CFA, internal consistency measured by using Cronbach’s α among the items (Table 2), the score ranges from .71 to .91 which lies between the acceptable limit of .7 and higher (Hair et al. [62]). Construct reliability was measured using composite reliability (C.R). The C.R. values also exceed the acceptable limit of 0.6 which ranges from 0.82 to 0.88, indicating the reliability of multiple indicators [60]. Furthermore, Factor Loadings and Average Variance Extracted (A.V.E) parameters were used for measuring convergent and discriminant validity. The standardized factor loading of all the items was above the threshold limit of 0.6 [61]. The A.V.E values are between 0.60 and 0.70, which achieved an acceptable limit of 0.5 as recommended by Hair, Black, et al. [62]. Table 4 shows evidence of discriminant validity according to the square root of AVE for each latent construct value higher than its correlation with other constructs [63]. Therefore, the measurement model confirmed satisfactory reliability and convergent validity (Table 3).

Table 2. Measurement constructs.
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Table 3. Discriminant validity of all constructs considered for the model.
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Table 4. Summary of hypotheses’ testing results.
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4.2 Structural Model: Goodness of Fit Statistics

According to the recommendations of Anderson and Gerbing [58], Bagozzi and Yi, [60] and Chau and Hu [64], the theoretical framework was tested by using the goodness of fit indices. We have tested the significance of the complete model constructs relationships and variances among the multiple variables in the proposed conceptual model. The model achieved a high significance level (χ2 = 229.382; degree of freedom = 123; probability level = 0.000). The results showed that goodness of fit statistics of the theoretical framework indicates a good fit, as it lies in the satisfactory edge (χ2 = 229.382, χ2/df = 1.865, Goodness of Fit index (GFI) = .922, Adjusted Goodness of fit index (AGFI) = .891, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .955, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .963, Incremental Fit Index (IFI) = .964, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .055). The observed value of AGFI was .891 that exceeds the cut-off level of .8 [60, 64, 65]. This outcome represents a good data fit the proposed theoretical framework for predicting entrepreneurs intention to accept facebook live for marketing.

4.3 Hypothesis Testing

All the variables of TAM; Perceived ease of use towards perceived usefulness (β = 0.123, p < 0.05), and intention (β = 0.388, p < 0.001), Perceived usefulness towards intention (β = 0.429, p < 0.001) were significantly related to the entrepreneurs intention towards social media live feature adoption, which supported the hypothesis H4, H5, and H6 respectively. The additional constructs included in the TAM; Compatibility towards perceived usefulness (β = 0.188, p < 0.05), Brand awareness towards perceived usefulness (β = 0.590, p < 0.001) have a significant positive influence on women entrepreneurs social media adoption for Facebook live store establishment, that supported the hypothesis H1 and H2. Hypothesis 3 consumer relationship towards perceived usefulness was not significantly supported (β = 0.056, p = .256). The proposed theoretical framework along with the β value is stated in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1.
figure 1

The causal relationship between study constructs and entrepreneurs’ intention towards social media adoption. Notes:*p < .05, ***p < .001.N.S. = Not Supported

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5 Discussion

This study endeavored to explore how rural educated unemployed women in Bangladesh are using social media (Facebook) to build small entrepreneurship stores and live marketing factors impact on their intention. The results specify that women are compatible with social media live features to build their marketing activity. More importantly, social media live promotion is very cost-effective for their product or service promotion. They engaged in developing entrepreneurial businesses to sell products directly to the consumer. This approach gives them connectivity to the peer groups, promoting products and services with enjoyment [66]. The ease of use and usefulness of these technologies are positively influencing woman entrepreneur’s intention towards accepting Facebook live marketing for online stores. Furthermore, the easy use of social media engagement with a playful mindset for direct selling or promoting the products. This is one of the utmost noteworthy reasons why more than 300,000 of the country’s online entrepreneurs selling products through Facebook [67]. Very low start-up investment and an established user base platform Facebook is a recognizable choice for women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh.

Empirical results suggested that compatibility, brand awareness is significantly related to Facebook live usage for entrepreneurship development. The finding proposed that higher levels of Facebook compatibility and brand awareness have a positive relationship with social media use to support online entrepreneurship store marketing. Compatibility (p < .01) and brand awareness (p < .001) on Facebook were found to be the significant factors that influenced women entrepreneurs towards Facebook live using for an online store promotion. Rapid ICT development in Bangladesh with internet connection availability empowered rural women to use Facebook for business [68,69,70]. This compatibility of accessible ICT infrastructure in Bangladesh was easily adopted by women entrepreneurs. The findings of this study on compatibility were constant with the earlier research which confirmed the significance of compatibility towards the adoption of technology for entrepreneurship [18, 48].

The result of the association between consumer relationship and perceived usefulness came out surprisingly opposite to the hypothesis. A possible explanation could be the contextual perception of the women entrepreneurs who are more conscious about promotional content development, brand awareness buildup. This study has also inspected the association between perceived ease of use towards perceived usefulness, and intention. As expected, the result specified a significant relationship in the context of online entrepreneurship marketing through Facebook live. A number of similar findings have been found in other studies conducted in different settings [46, 71, 72]. Consequently, the results recommend that women entrepreneurs’ are influenced by the user-friendly technological aspects.

To sum up, this study extended the research model (Fig. 1) in the context of social media acceptance for entrepreneurship marketing. Compatibility and brand awareness have an effect on perceived usefulness. Perceived usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use has a strong positive impact on Entrepreneurs’ Facebook using aptitude for business. The study results demonstrated the entrepreneur’s intention strongly influences constant using Facebook live marketing for future business activity. The result is steady with earlier research findings that found positive associations between technology usage and entrepreneurs attitude to using intention [18, 48, 50]. Social media adoption by women entrepreneurs in the SME context there is very limited studies that have been found in developing country context. This study contributes to the initial investigation approach to find technology adoption by the women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh who are actively marketing their products using Facebook live features to develop their online store.

6 Implications

Numbers of studies have been conducted to investigate the technology acceptance in various contexts [73,74,75,76,77,78]. But in the context of entrepreneurs’ Facebook live feature adoption for online business marketing, few studies investigated the organizational usage of Facebook in an integrated model with TAM [18, 48]. From the theoretical viewpoint, the findings provide a better understanding of the entrepreneurs’ Facebook live acceptance intention for online business marketing for economic sustainability. According to the literature search, this study is the initial study that investigating Bangladeshi women entrepreneurs’ Facebook acceptance for entrepreneurship development as a SME context.

Bangladesh is going to enter the middle-income country by 2021 [79]. In this perspective, it is most vital to ensure gender equity for the economic stability of the country. The finding of this study is predominantly important for administrators and academics who involved with entrepreneurship development through technology. While the social entrepreneurship consideration in Bangladesh has altered the lives of rural and urban peoples. As a result, strategy and practice could be utilized by low-income countries to develop their economic growth. Social media technology verified its importance by contributing to sustainable socio-economic development through entrepreneurship. This study recommended that women entrepreneurship is one of the effective solutions for a cut of poverty by low-income countries. Empirical results provide a snapshot of how acceptance of Facebook-based entrepreneurship enhances compatibility for business development. From any geological position, interested women’s inspired by the context of the study. Facebook, provides numerous opportunities to the women entrepreneurs to create content, share, promote and interact regarding products and services to the targeted audiences [80,81,82]. Thus, Entrepreneurs should incorporate regular promotional activity through the Facebook page with an opportunity to engage consumers by conversations for long term business relations [83, 84]. Therefore, state policymakers should consider the development and accessibility of information communication technology (ICT) for social media-based small entrepreneurship development. Administrators also may come up with motivational campaigns and training for women for social media base entrepreneurship. Therefore, it would be more functional to involved related industries to engage to develop products and services for the target consumers. This study evidenced the impact of social media acceptance for entrepreneurship development by women in Bangladesh. Consequently, underdeveloped countries and educated unemployed women can consider this opportunity to grow economic freedom through technology.

7 Limitations and Future Studies

There are limitations to this study. First of all, our results are based on a small set of respondents (n = 283), thus, the results cannot be generalized to explore all the online stores with the same factors in the process of adopting and using Facebook live for marketing. Secondly, only one social media platform, Facebook has been selected for the sampling frame. In the future, researchers may consider all kinds of social media platforms user respondents. Third, this study uses a survey approach, some time which is not bias-free from respondents’ subjective responses future studies, researchers may use an in-depth face to face interview approach with the target group or focus group discussion (FGD) for more details outcomes. Fourth, this study only focuses on social media base entrepreneurship. There is a plentiful opportunity in this research arena. For example, the researcher may consider economic freedom through sustainable entrepreneurship development and marketing. Researchers may also inspect behavioral theories and issues to improve the prediction of social media utilization for entrepreneurship development. Future studies can help in defining other factors and extending the current research model, such as interactivity, promotion, engagement, etc. Finally, this study was based on Bangladeshi social media base entrepreneurship development. It would be valuable to examine findings if the sample included another entrepreneurship platform in the country as well.