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This paper examines the ordeals actors of SMEs face in the adoption process of Emerging Digital Marketing Technology (EDMT). A conceptual framework was proposed to capture actors that participate in EMDT and the difficulties they (themselves) pose that hinder successful adoption. However, a purposive sample of 26 participants drawn from Crunch online database, Luton were interviewed on unstructured and semi-structured bases and analyzed using a thematic approach. The interviews on the problems were coded and classified based on the actors involved in the adoption process to extend the T-O-E framework. The findings revealed that while extant problems relate to the contexts of technology, organization, and environment, the extended T-O-E framework unraveled more critical problems that are linked to the in-grained human context. Implicit is that vendors should work on decision-makers, given that some of the adoption decisions are critically and continuously influenced by the actors.

In developing world, most decisions by Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to adopt social media marketing technology (SMMT) rely heavily on study findings from the Western World without much recourse to cross-context differences in structure and managerial capabilities. Thus, the lack of inquiries that provide complete guideline on the adoption of SMMT in developing economies hinders the development of integrated framework(s) that explains MSMEs’ successful adoption. The study used technology–organization–environment (T-O-E) framework as the theoretical basis to examine the critical factors that stimulate MSMEs adoption of SMMT in Nigeria. The adopted methodological choice was qualitative, involving interviews with 20 participants selected from the online directories via purposive and snowball sampling techniques. However, thematic analysis was the data treatment technique; and the study extended the T-O-E framework to provide an understanding into the dominant factors that specifically influence MSMEs’ adoption, without losing sight of vendors who would rely on the extended framework to get audiences continually satisfied.