The Role of Opinion Leadership in Social Media Marketing Technology Adoption Process

Abstract

Social media marketing is one of the modern marketing communications technology used by marketers to promote their offerings. During the Coronavirus pandemic, this tool would be beneficial in helping Small and Medium Enterprises to promote and survive their businesses. This  research analyze further the Opinion Leaders group behavior in Indonesian society as well as the rest Roger’s innovation adoption group categories, given there was a credibility problem in the use of social media with the intensed hoax or false news during the political leaders campaigns. A new research framework by using Structural Equation Modelling techniques is applied to explain further the adoption innovation process of typical public groups in general. The finding also shows there are direct significant influences and correlations among the credibility and socio-psychological factors, although there is no direct influence between the information credibility and the adoption of social media marketing. As the result it indicates the important role of the millennial as Opinion Leaders in the adoption process of social media marketing in this post-truth and uncertain pandemic millennium.

Keywords: Social media marketing, credibility, opinion leader, innovation adoption, millennial, SME