br Theoretical foundation of the study br

Theoretical foundation of the study
Methodology A Web-based survey was distributed to 3060 international and/or general manager in charge of the firm\'s foreign business activity of Spanish exporting firms in the food sector, beverage sector, consumer goods, raw materials, industrial products and capital goods sectors; from the ICEX (Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade) database by e-mail from March to May 2013. After a second re-call wave, the final valid number of companies in the study is 152. Consistent with the suggestion by Stanton and Rogelberg (2001), we decided to send just two reminder e-mails. As different authors point out, ‘frequent e-mail participation reminders may be perceived as intrusive’ (Michalak & Szabo, 1998, p. 205). To analysis the possible nonresponse bias, we compared the number of times the Web page with the survey was requested with the number of completed research responses actually received, so we can make a reasonable estimation of active refusals: 1100 times the web page was requested and 152 is the number of completed research responses (152 represent a 13.2% rate of non-refusal, rate that is close to the acceptable range of 15–20% mentioned by Menon, Bharadwaj, & Howell, 1996). Descriptive information of the firms in the sample is presented in Table 1. In the final sample obtained firms have 163 employees on average (63.5% have fewer than 52 employees), similar percentage than the one obtained by Navarro-García, Arenas-Gaitán, and Rondán-Cataluña (2014), on average the age is 34.16 and the export experience is about 20 years (64.58% have more than 14 years of export activity, similar percentage than the one obtained in the sample of Navarro-García et al. (2014): 61% have more than 15 years of export activity). Furthermore, 59.60% have website, 12.50% develop e-Commerce, and they order Mifepristone have profile on approximately 2 social media applications on average.
Results
Discussion and conclusions The results obtained in the empirical section allow us to confirm all the hypotheses suggested and answer the two research questions initially established: what is the relationship between managerial beliefs regarding social media and the subsequent adoption of these tools by exporting companies? and, does the export dependence, measured by export intensity, moderate this relationship? We have seen that managers’ beliefs about the adequacy of social media capabilities for dealing with foreign customers generate a positive managerial attitude and a greater intention to use these applications. In addition, this positive attitude also has a favorable effect upon managerial intention of using social media that increases the usage of all of these applications within the firm. Therefore, as in previous research, we have also demonstrated that attitude has an intervening effect on the relation between beliefs and intention (e.g., Cheng, Lam, & Yeung, 2006). Actually, beliefs are a key factor in the adoption process and use of any IT. This research specifically offers insight of the influence that the beliefs of one person can exert, in this case the manager\'s beliefs, in the adoption and use of social media. In addition, for Spanish exporting companies, the adoption of social media is conditioned by the export dependence of the firm, measured by its export intensity, as they give a greater importance of these tools when the importance of international versus domestic market is also higher. Probably, the moderating effect of export intensity on the attitude and using behavior of social media, is due to when the weight of international business is very important, companies want to keep their competitive position outside, therefore is key to have access to the customer needs, and stakeholders needs in general. Social media are the means by which consumers can express their needs and thoughts, and may be an essential tool in maintaining relationships and bidirectional communication with the different stakeholders.