Social commerce constructs and consumer's intention to buy

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2014.12.005Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This research investigates the new stream in e-commerce.

  • The research uses SEM-PLS to analysis the proposed model.

  • The model explains social commerce constructs and its influence on intention to buy and trust.

Abstract

Social commerce is a new development in e-commerce generated by the use of social media to empower customers to interact on the Internet. The recent advancements in ICTs and the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies along with the popularity of social media and social networking sites have seen the development of new social platforms. These platforms facilitate the use of social commerce. Drawing on literature from marketing and information systems (IS) the author proposes a new model to develop our understanding of social commerce using a PLS-SEM methodology to test the model. Results show that Web 2.0 applications are attracting individuals to have interactions as well as generate content on the Internet. Consumers use social commerce constructs for these activities, which in turn increase the level of trust and intention to buy. Implications, limitations, discussion, and future research directions are discussed at the end of the paper.

Introduction

Recent advancements in information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies have brought new developments to e-commerce. The popularity of social technologies and platforms such as social networking sites (SNSs) is one of the main reasons for advancement in this area (Liang & Turban, 2011). These developments attract individuals to come online and have interactions with their friends on social platforms such as online communities. The social connections and interactions of people on the internet, especially in social networking sites, the main focus of SNSs (Fue, Li, & Wenyu, 2009), have developed e-commerce to social commerce. These advancements shape a postmodern view of consumers (Füller, Mühlbacher, Matzler, & Jawecki, 2009), where they communicate, rate other products, review others’ opinions, participate in forums, share their experiences and recommend products and services. They co-create value with firm (Wang & Hajli, 2014). This is an advantage of social commerce era, where consumers interact and their social interaction influence other consumers (Hajli, Lin, Featherman, & Wang, 2014). Social commerce is mediated by social media (Hajli, 2014a, Jeppesen and Molin, 2003, Shin, 2013) and is mostly related to online communities and SNSs, which have grown rapidly (Lu & Hsiao, 2010). These social platforms give opportunities to consumers to support each other with information exchange and with the content they generate there (Hajli, 2013).

Trust is a challenging issue of e-commerce for consumers (Gefen & Straub, 2000). Trust can now be supported by social commerce as social commerce includes social interactions of consumers, which increase the level of trust (Hajli et al., 2014). Distrust fails to shape a good relationship between consumers and firms (Jones & Leonard, 2008). Therefore, trust is a critical point in an online context. Considering trust as a critical aspect of e-commerce, this research is being directed to investigate the role of social interactions of consumers through social commerce constructs in order to establish trust in e-commerce platforms.

The present study tries to develop social commerce constructs and investigate on the role of these constructs on trust and intention to buy. SCCs are forums and communities, ratings and reviews and referrals and recommendations. Therefore, this study recognizes social commerce constructs and tries to answer these questions: (1) Do social commerce constructs influence consumers’ trust and their purchase decisions? (2) Does trust influence social commerce intention?

Section snippets

Social commerce

Social commerce is a new stream and subset of e-commerce (Hajli, 2014b, Kim and Park, 2013), which enables consumers to generate content. Social commerce enables vendors to reach different markets by integrating social interactions of consumers (Hargadon & Bechky, 2006). Social commerce is a new development in e-commerce with the popularity of social networking sites and social media that enable consumers to be active content creators on the Internet. A powerful tool for this is social media,

Research model and development of hypotheses

In this research a social commerce adoption model has been developed in order to increase our understanding of social commerce and emerging social relationships of individual on the Internet. Specifically, this research investigates the role of SCCs to discover the role of these constructs on a social commerce environment. Along with SCCs, recommendations and referrals, forums and communities and rating and reviews, the researcher added trust and intention to buy as on-going issues in

Research methodology

An empirical study was conducted to test the relationship between the constructs and a questionnaire was developed for this purpose. The research conducted a survey to collect the data, which is described below.

Discussion

A social commerce adoption model has been developed in order to study consumer's behaviour in social commerce era. The results of this study show that consumers are increasingly using SNSs to share their knowledge, information, and experiences about a product or a service with their peers. They use social commerce constructs to have social interaction with their peers. Initially, the model emphasized the role of social relationships of individuals on the Internet and the paradigm change of

Conclusion

This research investigates the new stream in e-commerce; social commerce to offer better understanding of social commerce. In the present study, the author borrowed some constructs from technology acceptance model to explain social commerce constructs and its influence on intention to buy and trust. Social commerce constructs, namely, forums and communities, ratings and reviews and recommendations and referrals are the main constructs of the social commerce adoption model. A research model with

Nick Hajli is the degree programme director for the BSc in Marketing programme and a Lecturer in Marketing in Newcastle University Business School. He also serves as the guest editor for the International Journal of Information Management and the Technological Forecasting and Social Change Journal. His active research areas are consumer decision making in a social commerce context, co-creation of value with consumers, and healthcare development in current digital era. His research has appeared

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    Nick Hajli is the degree programme director for the BSc in Marketing programme and a Lecturer in Marketing in Newcastle University Business School. He also serves as the guest editor for the International Journal of Information Management and the Technological Forecasting and Social Change Journal. His active research areas are consumer decision making in a social commerce context, co-creation of value with consumers, and healthcare development in current digital era. His research has appeared in the top 20 Journals used in Business School Research Rankings such as Journal of Business Ethics. He has also published on refereed journals such as Technological Forecasting and Social Change, International Journal of Market Research, International Journal of Information Management, and other quality journals as well as in several international Conferences. His recent paper was among the finalists from the nominations for an outstanding paper award in the 20th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS 2014).

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