Social Commerce Constructs and Consumer's Intention to Buy

International Journal of Information Management 35 (2015) 183–191
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International Journal of Information Management
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / i j i n f o m g t Social commerce constructs and consumer’s intention to buyNick Hajli ∗Newcastle University Business School, United Kingdoma r t i c l e i n f oArticle history:Available online 3 January 2015Keywords:Social commerceSocial commerce constructSocial mediaSocial networking siteTrustPLS-SEMa b s t r a c tSocial commerce is a new development in e-commerce generated by the use of social media to empowercustomers to interact on the Internet. The recent advancements in ICTs and the emergence of Web 2.0technologies along with the popularity of social media and social networking sites have seen the develop-ment of new social platforms. These platforms facilitate the use of social commerce. Drawing on literaturefrom marketing and information systems (IS) the author proposes a new model to develop our under-standing of social commerce using a PLS-SEM methodology to test the model. Results show that Web 2.0applications 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 trustand intention to buy. Implications, limitations, discussion, and future research directions are discussedat the end of the paper.© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.1. IntroductionRecent advancements in information and communication tech-nologies (ICTs) and the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies havebrought new developments to e-commerce. The popularity of socialtechnologies 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 comeonline and have interactions with their friends on social platformssuch as online communities. The social connections and interac-tions of people on the internet, especially in social networkingsites, the main focus of SNSs (Fue, Li, & Wenyu, 2009), have devel-oped e-commerce to social commerce. These advancements shapea postmodern view of consumers (Füller, Mühlbacher, Matzler,& Jawecki, 2009), where they communicate, rate other products,review others’ opinions, participate in forums, share their experi-ences and recommend products and services. They co-create valuewith firm (Wang & Hajli, 2014). This is an advantage of socialcommerce era, where consumers interact and their social inter-action influence other consumers (Hajli, Lin, Featherman, & Wang,2014). Social commerce is mediated by social media (Hajli, 2014a;Jeppesen & Molin, 2003; Shin, 2013) and is mostly related to onlinecommunities and SNSs, which have grown rapidly (Lu & Hsiao,2010). These social platforms give opportunities to consumers to∗ Tel.: [phone].E-mail address: [e-mail] each other with information exchange and with the con-tent 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 associal commerce includes social interactions of consumers, whichincrease the level of trust (Hajli et al., 2014). Distrust fails to shape agood 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 researchis being directed to investigate the role of social interactions of con-sumers through social commerce constructs in order to establishtrust in e-commerce platforms.The present study tries to develop social commerce constructsand investigate on the role of these constructs on trust and intentionto buy. SCCs are forums and communities, ratings and reviews andreferrals and recommendations. Therefore, this study recognizessocial commerce constructs and tries to answer these questions:(1) Do social commerce constructs influence consumers’ trust andtheir purchase decisions? (2) Does trust influence social commerceintention?2. Literature review and theoretical framework2.1. Social commerceSocial commerce is a new stream and subset of e-commerce(Hajli, 2014b; Kim & Park, 2013), which enables consumers to gen-erate content. Social commerce enables vendors to reach different
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2014.12.005
0268-4012/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

184 N. Hajli / International Journal of Information Management 35 (2015) 183–191markets 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 socialmedia that enable consumers to be active content creators on theInternet. A powerful tool for this is social media, which differenti-ates e-commerce from social commerce. Social commerce is theuse of Web 2.0 applications to support interaction of people inan online context where the contribution of users can help in theacquisition of services and products (Liang & Turban, 2011). Thepopularity of social media sites is the main element for develop-ment in this area, introducing new business models as a result(Leitner & Grechenig, 2007; Liang & Turban, 2011). Social mediatechnologies have become social tools and online platforms arenow places where users share information and use opinions andexperiences of others in music, photographs, insight and knowl-edge (Lai & Turban, 2008). In this era, SNSs and the attractionof its applications play an important role in the development ofsocial media (Johann, Bartl, Ernst, & Hans, 2006; Liang & Turban,2011). The mission of SNSs is to create online communities wheremembers can share and seek common interests, activities, expe-riences and information (Shin, 2010). Social commerce statisticsshow that this is a promising phenomenon. Social commerce isintroducing new business models based on online communitieswhere the objective is to bring features of Web 2.0 technologiesto e-commerce in order to design customer-oriented business. Thebusinesses can develop an online community and encourage theirconsumers to share their knowledge, experiences, and informa-tion about their products or services, which forms social commercestrategy for them. Alternatively, the firms may join popular SNSssuch as Facebook and sell their product through this channel orask their consumers to like their page or product to benefit fromsocial commerce. Many companies have their Facebook page andask their consumers to share their comments about the products orthe services on these social platform, which help them to introducetheir products or services. Channel, H&M, Selfridge, Dell and manyother shops are examples of brands that use social commerce in thiscontext.2.2. Social commerce constructsThe experience of consumers in an online environment enabledby social media is different to that offline, as the customers havesocial interactions with other individuals (Do-Hyung, Jumin, &Ingoo, 2007). Today researchers claim that through social mediaand the emergence of social platforms such as forums and com-munities, ratings and reviews, and referrals and recommendations,consumers do have sociability. In addition, relationships betweene-vendor and consumers are in fact personal. These social plat-forms are social commerce constructs, which this research willinvestigate. SCCs are social platforms which have emerged fromWeb 2.0 and empowered consumers to generate content and sharetheir experiences. They also use others’ information, offer adviceand share experiences in these platforms providing a source foronline social support. Although, SCCs have the same functions tofacilitate the sharing of information and establishing social sup-port platforms for consumers, they are different in their technicalcapabilities.Ratings and reviews are one of the constructs that shape socialcommerce. Individuals can easily post their product reviews online(Chen, Xu, & Whinston, 2011) and rate products. These reviews andratings give comprehensive information about products for thebenefit of other potential customers. Research shows that a pop-ular product review by a third party is growing (Yubo & Jinhong,2005). It is argued that reviews generated by a third party reducecustomers’ need for advertising information (Yubo & Jinhong,2005). Therefore, reviews and ratings seem to generate effectiveinformation for customers. Additionally, the engagement ofconsumers in co-creation and content generation empowersthem (Füller et al., 2009), where they are able to learn aboutothers’ experiences about a product, for instance. Consumers areincreasingly co-creating value with firms (Prahalad & Ramaswamy,2004). Empowerment refers to the capability of social technologiesto enable people to have social interaction and collaborate onthe Internet (Füller et al., 2009). Research shows that customerfeedbacks and ratings promote a higher level of trust (Ba & Pavlou,2002; Ono et al., 2003). However, information related to the iden-tity of reviewers has an effect on community members’ perceptions(Chris, Anindya, & Batia, 2008). This issue has been raised as a resultof fake ratings and reviews produced by third parties. E-vendorsnow have to consider whether to take actions to persuade review-ers to give more information about their identity (Chris et al., 2008)to assure consumers about the authenticity of ratings and reviews.Recommendations and referrals, the other construct of SCCs,are likely to play an important role on social commerce intention.Research shows, in an online context, as customers cannot expe-rience the products or services, consumers should rely more onother consumers’ experiences such as their product recommenda-tions (Senecal & Nantel, 2004). In a high street shop, customersspend their time in store and interact with the staff whereas in anonline shop it is a major challenge to create an online store whichis socially rich (Kumar, Novak, & Tomkins, 2010).The third construct of social commerce is forums and com-munities. Online communities and Internet forums are socialenvironment that facilitate social interaction of individuals. Mem-bers of online communities participate in different group activitiesand support other members through their social interactions andcommunications in the provided platform (Bagozzi & Dholakia,2002). They use social technologies, such as social media, onlinecommunities and other Web 2.0 applications, to support othermembers by their experience and information sharing. These com-munities allow people to obtain information for products andservices and to support each other (Y. Lu, Zhao, & Wang, 2010).This type of information, which is created by other consumers, is anew kind of word-of-mouth recommendation as used in traditionalmarkets (Do-Hyung et al., 2007).2.3. TrustTrust is a central issue in most economic and social transac-tions, especially in an online context where there may be lots ofuncertainty (Pavlou, 2003). Trust is more important when risks areperceived to be high, as in the case of e-commerce (Mutz, 2005).This area has been widely studied by researchers (Gefen, 2002;Gefen, Karahanna, & Straub, 2003; Kim, 2012; Morid & Shajari,2012; Mutz, 2005; Pavlou, 2003). It is mostly because trust plays animportant role in the e-commerce adoption process (Aljifri, Pons,& Collins, 2003) and it has a significant role in online commerce(Gefen, 2002).With the increase of social technologies and interconnectivityof people on the Internet, there is a need for some sort of trustand security that will allow two parties to reduce their perceivedrisk in transactions (Hajli & Lin, 2014). Research shows that peo-ple like to reduce their social uncertainty (Gefen & Straub, 2004).It is also argued that if an e-commerce website describes prod-ucts or services accurately, consumers will trust the website more(Ming-Hsien, Chandlrees, Binshan, & Hung-Yi, 2009). This can befacilitated by social technologies such as customer reviews, infor-mation and experiences of others in forums and communities. Forinstance, when a reputable member of an online forum or commu-nity makes a recommendation to a vendor by giving good feedback,the other members are likely to have a high level of trust in theprocess (Lu et al., 2010).

N. Hajli / International Journal of Information Management 35 (2015) 183–191 185SocialCommerceConstructsTrustIntention to BuyRecommendations & ReferralsRatings &ReviewsForums &CommunitiesH 1H 2 H 3Fig. 1. Social commerce adoption model.There are differences in the definition of trust, depending on thedifferent dimensions involved. In e-commerce literature, benevo-lence and credibility are seen as two distinct types of trust (Ba &Pavlou, 2002). Credibility based trust, which usually is impersonaland relies on reputation information, refers to the belief that theother party in a transaction is reliable and honest (Ba & Pavlou,2002). Benevolence, however, refers to repeated seller-buyer rela-tionships (Ba & Pavlou, 2002). There is also a three dimensionaldefinition of trust (Gefen, 2002) namely integrity, ability and benev-olence. Ability refers to the skills of the trusted party, integrityrefers to honesty and keeping promises of the e-vendor and finallybenevolence is the intention of the trusted party to do well for theirconsumers (Gefen, 2002; Gefen & Straub, 2004).In the present environment where social interactions of peopleon the Internet shape new forms of interconnectivity and relation-ships between people, the study of trust might be influenced bysocial relationships of people and the platforms on which theyinteract. Social trust is important because it reduces “transactioncost” in business interactions (Mutz, 2005). It reduces the ten-dency to monitor other parties’ activities and is an element insanctioning systems as reliable (Mutz, 2005). In fact, the infor-mation from a commercial website is different from informationprovided by other customers. The information that consumers pro-vide by their reviews is seen to be more trustworthy (Do-Hyunget al., 2007).To endorse trust in an online environment, it is important tohave some mechanisms to provide credible signals to distinguishamong sellers (Ba & Pavlou, 2002). For this purpose, SCCs providerecommendations, referrals and ratings. These constructs give sell-ers reasons to be trustworthy. Social interactions of customers onsocial platforms and social commerce constructs seem to have animpact on users’ behaviour. Researchers agree that social activitiesin SNSs will increase intention to buy (Han & Windsor, 2011). Thisresearch considers two dimensional trusts, benevolence and credi-bility. Benevolence refers to goodwill trust while credibility coversreliability, integrity and honesty (Pavlou, 2003). The present studydefines trust in SNSs as the degree to which the SNS is willing toput into operation its commitment and promises. Therefore, trustis a vital component in the operation of SNSs.2.4. Intention to buyIntention to buy is a construct of technology acceptance model(TAM), one of the most successful theories in predicting an indi-vidual’s intention to use a system (Pavlou, 2003). There are twocore theories to test and predict an individual’s intention to uti-lize information systems (Mathieson, 1991). These two theories areTAM and the theory of planned behaviour by Ajzen (1989). Inten-tion to buy in the present study is defined as a customer’s intentionto engage in online buying in social networking sites. TAM is a coretheory in e-commerce studies (Martins, Oliveira, & Popoviˇc, 2014;Park, Roman, Lee, & Chung, 2009) and many authors developed thismodel (Hsiao & Yang, 2011).3. Research model and development of hypothesesIn this research a social commerce adoption model has beendeveloped in order to increase our understanding of social com-merce and emerging social relationships of individual on theInternet. Specifically, this research investigates the role of SCCs todiscover the role of these constructs on a social commerce environ-ment. Along with SCCs, recommendations and referrals, forums andcommunities and rating and reviews, the researcher added trustand intention to buy as on-going issues in e-commerce. These areincluded in the model as shown in Fig. 1.3.1. Social commerce constructsThe emergence of Web 2.0 applications and the ability of usersto co-create on the internet has supported consumers in solvingtasks while giving them feelings of empowerment and enjoyment(Füller et al., 2009). Research shows that social activities on theseplatforms have economic implications in the form of product sales(Chris et al., 2008).The impact of social media in the market can be seen from howe-vendors provide more opportunities than before to interact withconsumers (Amblee & Bui, 2011). Social commerce, with the aid ofWeb 2.0 and social media technology, facilitate consumers’ ratingsand reviews, and recommendations and referrals. Ratings and