Designing social commerce platforms based on consumers’ intentions

Social commerce has been gaining momentum over the last few years as a novel form of e-commerce, creating substantial changes for both businesses and consumers. However, little is known about how consumer behaviour is influenced by characteristics on social commerce platforms. The purpose of this research is to elucidate how user intentions to purchase and to spread word-of-mouth (WOM) are influenced by characteristics present on social commerce platforms. More specifically, we adopt a uses-and-gratifications perspective and examine the influence of socialising, personal recommendation agents, product selection, and information availability. Partial least squares structural equation modelling analysis is performed on a sample of 165 social commerce users. Outcomes of the analysis indicate that socialising and personal recommendation agents positively influence purchase and WOM intentions, while product selection is found to only enhance purchase intentions. Interestingly, our findings reveal that information availability has no significant effect on purchase and WOM intentions. Finally, we find that when purchase intentions are triggered, they will tend increase consumers’ intentions to WOM.     

The influence of eWOM in social media on consumers’ purchase intentions: An extended approach to information adoption

Social media websites have created valuable opportunities for electronic word of mouth (eWOM) conversations. People are now able to discuss products and services of brands with their friends and acquaintances. The aim of this study is to examine the influence of these conversations in social media on consumers' purchase intentions. For this purpose, a conceptual model was developed based on the integration of Information Adoption Model (IAM) and related components of Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). The new model, which is named as Information Acceptance Model (IACM), was validated through structural equation modelling (SEM) based on surveys of 384 university students who use social media websites. The results confirm that quality, credibility, usefulness and adoption of information, needs of information and attitude towards information are the key factors of eWOM in social media that influence consumers’ purchase intentions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed as well as recommendations for further research.     

Understanding users’ continuous content contribution behaviours on microblogs: an integrated perspective of uses and gratification theory and social influence theory

ABSTRACT

Microblogs are revolutionising the way users produce, consume and distribute short content. The continuous content contributions of users are crucial for the sustainable development of microblogs. Knowledge regarding this user behaviour is scarce. Based on the uses and gratifications theory (U&G) and the social influence theory (SIT), this paper proposes an integrated research model with the aim of understanding the factors that affect users’ continuous content contribution behaviours (CCCB) on microblogs. The data were collected from 379 microblog users in China. The empirical results indicate that perceived gratification had a positive but surprisingly trivial effect on continuous content contribution behaviours. Social influence had a strong and significantly positive effect on users’ CCCB, it also had a positive moderating effect on the relationship between perceived gratification and CCCB. Users’ perceived gratification was positively affected by the antecedents of self-expression, anticipated extrinsic rewards and anticipated reciprocity but negatively affected by privacy concerns. The platform attributes of microblogs (i.e. accessibility and interactivity) also influenced users’ perceived gratification. This research contributes to social media research with regards to the theory of users’ CCCB.     

Understanding the intentions of users to ‘stick’ to social networking sites: a case study in Taiwan

Social networking sites (SNSs) are the most popular social platforms for developing personal networks. They provide multiple interactive functions for users to create and use large social networks. To determine why people exhibit ‘stickiness’ to SNSs, this study uses the uses and gratifications theory as an underlying structure and builds the research model with factors of motivational needs and interactivity. Our results showed that social needs, information needs, human–message interaction, and human–human interaction are crucial factors that affect the ‘stickiness’ of users to SNSs. The implications of these findings are presented in this paper.     

Understanding the determinants of users’ subjective well-being in social networking sites: an integration of social capital theory and social presence theory

In order to understand the factors affecting users’ well-being perception derived from social networking sites usage, this study integrates the perspectives of social presence theory and social capital theory to develop a research model. Data were collected from 305 users of Facebook in Taiwan to test the model. The findings reveal that structural capital, relational capital, and cognitive capital exert significant influences on subjective well-being. The results also reveal that structural capital and cognitive capital have positive influence on relational capital, while structural capital influences cognitive capital significantly. The results, on the other hand, show that awareness and affective social presence are the antecedents of structural capital, whereas cognitive social presence and affective social presence influence cognitive capital significantly. Finally, affective social presence is associated with relational capital positively. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

How does justice matter in online retailers’ reputation and purchase intentions: an empirical study of China

In recent years, online shopping has been proliferated around the world. Online retailers’ reputation and purchase intentions are critical for survival and profitability of any online store. Thus, this study proposes a research framework to examine the perceived justice effects on customers purchase intention and online retailers’ reputation. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to demonstrate the reliability and validity of the measurement model, and the structural equation modelling technique was used to test the research model. The hypothesised model was validated empirically using data collected from 383 online shopping customers in China. The results indicated that perceived procedural, distributive and interactional justice components were strong predictors of customers purchase intention and online retailers’ reputation while online retailers’ reputation had significant effects on purchase intentions. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications are also presented in the paper.     

How do social-based cues influence consumers’ online purchase decisions? An event-related potential study

Product rating and sales are two important social-based cues in online shopping. This study applies the event-related potential (ERP) approach to explore the underlying neural mechanism of the joint influence of these two cues on consumers’ decision-making. Behavioral data show that product rating has a greater impact on the purchasing rate than sales, which positively moderates the latter’s effect and supports cue-diagnosticity theory. Electrophysiological data provide further explanations for the observed behavioral pattern. Analyses of main ERP components suggest that consumers go through a series of cognitive processes from processing of perceived risk (N2) and informational conflict (N400) to evaluative categorization (LPP) before making the final purchasing decision. Specifically, product rating significantly influences the risk perception while the combination of high rating and low sales elicits significant cognitive conflict. Both cues are adopted by consumers to make an overall evaluation based on their similarity to the criterion.     

Understanding Chinese users’ continuance intention toward online social networks: an integrative theoretical model

This study explores users’ continuance intention in online social networks by synthesizing Bhattacherjee’s IS continuance theory with flow theory, social capital theory, and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) to consider the special hedonic, social and utilitarian factors in the online social network environment. The integrated model was empirically tested with 320 online social network users in China. The results indicated that continuance intention was explained substantially by all hypothesized antecedents including perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, usage satisfaction, effort expectancy, social influence, tie strength, shared norms and trust. Based on the research findings, we offer discussions of both theoretical and practical implications.     

Understanding taxi drivers’ routing choices from spatial and social traces

Most of our learning comes from other people or from our own experience. For instance, when a taxi driver is seeking passengers on an unknown road in a large city, what should the driver do? Alternatives include cruising around the road or waiting for a time period at the roadside in the hopes of finding a passenger or just leaving for another road enroute to a destination he knows (e.g., hotel taxi rank)? This is an interesting problem that arises everyday in cities all over the world. There could be different answers to the question poised above, but one fundamental problem is how the driver learns about the likelihood of finding passengers on a road that is new to him (as he has not picked up or dropped off passengers there before). Our observation from large scale taxi driver trace data is that a driver not only learns from his own experience but through interactions with other drivers. In this paper, we first formally define this problem as socialized information learning (SIL), second we propose a framework including a series of models to study how a taxi driver gathers and learns information in an uncertain environment through the use of his social network. Finally, the large scale real life data and empirical experiments confirm that our models are much more effective, efficient and scalable that prior work on this problem.     

Understanding consumers’ continuance intention towards mobile purchase: A theoretical framework and empirical study – A case of China

Although mobile purchase is convenient in the age of mobile commerce, many consumers still do not utilize mobile purchase to its full potential. From the mobile vendor’s perspective, retaining current customers and facilitating their continued purchase are crucial to create profitability and achieve a sustainable development. An understanding of the continuance intention towards mobile purchase can provide insights into mobile vendors’ marketing campaigns. Therefore, it is important to examine the determinants that impact continuance intentions of consumers for mobile purchase. Drawing upon information success model, flow theory and trust, this study proposed and empirically tested an integrated model to better understand the determinants of consumers’ continued intention to purchase on mobile sites. Empirical data from 462 users who had experience with mobile purchase were tested against the proposed research model by using structural equation modelling (SEM). The results indicated that information quality, and privacy and security concerns are the main factors affecting trust, whereas service quality is the main factor affecting flow. System quality, and privacy and security concerns affect satisfaction. Trust affects flow, which in turn affects satisfaction. These three factors together affect continued intention towards mobile purchase. The findings of this study provide several important implications for mobile commerce research and practice.     

Examining online consumers’ initial trust building from an elaboration likelihood model perspective

Due to the high perceived risk and low switching costs, it is critical for online vendors to foster consumers’ initial trust in order to facilitate their online transactions. The extant research has focused on using the technology acceptance model to examine initial trust, and has seldom disclosed the processes through which initial trust develops. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model, this research examined online consumers’ initial trust building when visiting a new website for the first time. The results indicated that initial trust develops along dual routes including a central route represented by argument quality and a peripheral route represented by source credibility. Self-efficacy significantly moderates the effect of argument quality on initial trust. In addition, we found the direct effects of both cultural variables-uncertainty avoidance and individualism-on initial trust.     

Understanding consumers’ continuance intention towards mobile advertising: a theoretical framework and empirical study

While issues regarding mobile advertising have captured the interest and attention of both practitioners and academics, in practice success stories are rare. An understanding of the continuance intention to use such services can provide insights into failed mobile marketing campaigns, and help to improve the implementation of future ones. Therefore, it is important to examine the underlying drivers of loyalty with regard to mobile advertising. This study uses the expectation–confirmation model in conjunction with the perspectives of value and trust to derive an integrated model to better understand the motivations behind consumers’ continued use of mobile advertising. We conducted an empirical study consisting of an online survey of 508 consumers who had experience with mobile advertising. The results show that perceived value, perceived usefulness, and satisfaction all directly influence continuance intention. Furthermore, consumer satisfaction has a crucial intervening role in the relationships that perceived value, perceived usefulness, and confirmation have with continuance intention. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. One key limitation of this research is that the majority of respondents were students, although this group is the chief user of mobile advertising. Future research could be extended to consider other drivers of loyalty in this context, such as cultural differences and personal behavioural characteristics.     

MGC,consumers’ engagement with MGC,WOM and consumers’ purchase intention: the case of Weibo platform

Information Systems and e-Business Management - Nowadays, consumers spend more time on and pay more attention to information on social media. Thus, firms are constantly concerned if...     

Gender differences in consumers’ perception of online consumer reviews

Since the early days of the Internet, gender gap has existed in using the Internet, and it is particularly evident for online shopping. Females perceive higher level of risk for online shopping, and as a result, they tend to hesitate to make purchase online. Online consumer reviews can effectively mitigate such perceived risk by females and thereby attract them to buy online. This study investigates the effect of online consumer reviews on consumer’s purchase intention. In particular, we examine whether there are gender differences in responding to online consumer reviews. The results show that the effect of online consumer reviews on purchase intention is stronger for females than males. The negativity effect, that consumers are influenced by a negative review more than by a positive review, is also found to be more evident for females. These findings have practical implications for online sellers to guide them to effectively use online consumer reviews to engage females in online shopping.     

Product type and consumers’ perception of online consumer reviews

Consumers hesitate to buy experience products online because it is hard to get enough information about experience products via the Internet. Online consumer reviews may change that, as they offer consumers indirect experiences about dominant attributes of experience products, transforming them into search products. When consumers are exposed to an online consumer review, it should be noted that there are different kinds of review sources. This study investigates the effects of review source and product type on consumers’ perception of a review. The result of the online experiment suggests that product type can moderate consumers’ perceived credibility of a review from different review sources, and the major findings are: (1) consumers are more influenced by a review for an experience product than for a search product when the review comes from consumer-developed review sites, and (2) a review from an online community is perceived to be the most credible for consumers seeking information about an experience product. The findings provide managerial implications for marketers as to how they can better manage online consumer reviews.     

Predicting Asian undergraduates’ intention to continue using social network services from negative perspectives

With the maturity of the social network service (SNS) market, the increasing sophistication of its customer or user base, and the growing intensity of competition, SNS success has now become a pressing issue. Understanding the antecedents of continuance intention is the first step to assure the success of an SNS. This study proposed a model to examine the key drivers of users’ intention to continue using SNSs from negative standpoints. The developed research model was empirically validated using the responses from a field survey of 236 Asian undergraduates. The results revealed that normative pressure and fatigue are the main determinants of the users’ intention to continue using SNSs. Moreover, the findings showed that satisfaction is a major determinant of fatigue, whereas negative critical incidents are crucial predictors of satisfaction. The negative critical incidents experienced when undergraduates use services include rumour dissemination, advertising interference, and low ease of use. The implications of the present findings for research and managerial practice were analysed and discussed.     

Towards understanding the gamification upon users’ scores in a location-based social network

Online social platform, such as Wikipedia and Foursquare, has been increasingly exploded due to not only various useful services provided but also social gaming mechanisms that can keep users actively engaged. For example, users are awarded ”virtual goods” like badges and points when they contribute to the community in the network by voluntarily sharing ideas and other information. In this paper, we aim to examine the effectiveness of a social gamification mechanism, named user scores, designed in Foursquare which is one of most popular location-based social networks. A user’s score in Foursquare is an aggregate measure based on recent check-in activities of the user, which reflects a snapshot summary of the user’s temporal and spatial behaviors. Whenever a user checks in to a venue, a list of scores of the user’s friends are visible to the user via a ”leaderboard” which ranks these users’ scores in a descending order. Given a pair of friends who participate in a score competition in such a gimification mechanism, we identify if one user’s scores have significant influence on the other user’s scores by utilizing the Granger Causality Test. To understand what types of users and what types of friends tend to participate in the score competition (i.e., their check-ins are more likely driven by such a gamification mechanism), we extract users’ features (e.g. user’s degree) as well as the features of pairs of friends (e.g., number of common friends, score similarity and ranking difference) to examine whether these features have correlations with those pairs of users who are identified as being involved in the score game. The identified influence on user scores has the important implication on applications including friend and venue recommendations in location-based social networks.     

Characterizing users’ check-in activities using their scores in a location-based social network

Analysis of users’ check-ins in location-based social networks (LBSNs, also called GeoSocial Networks), such as Foursquare and Yelp, is essential to understand users’ mobility patterns and behaviors. However, most empirical results of users’ mobility patterns reported in the current literature are based on users’ sampled and nonconsecutive public check-ins. Additionally, such analyses take no account of the noise or false information in the dataset, such as dishonest check-ins created by users. These empirical results may be biased and hence may bring side effects to LBSN services, such as friend and venue recommendations. Foursquare, one of the most popular LBSNs, provides a feature called a user’s score. A user’s score is an aggregate measure computed by the system based on more accurate and complete check-ins of the user. It reflects a snapshot of the user’s temporal and spatial patterns from his/her check-ins. For example, a high user score indicates that the user checked in at many venues regularly or s/he visited a number of new venues. In this paper, we show how a user’s score can be used as an alternative way to investigate the user’s mobility patterns. We first characterize a set of properties from the time series of a user’s consecutive weekly scores. Based on these properties, we identify different types of users by clustering users’ common check-in patterns using non-negative matrix factorization (NMF). We then analyze the correlations between the social features of user clusters and users’ check-in patterns. We present several interesting findings. For example, users with high scores (more mobile) tend to have more friends (more social). Our empirical results demonstrate how to uncover interesting spatio-temporal patterns by utilizing the aggregate measures released by a LBSN service.     

Employees’ proactiveness on enterprise social media and social consequences: An integrated perspective of social network and social exchange theories

This study delves into how employee proactiveness on enterprise social media can influence social outcomes at work, both positively and negatively. Drawing on social network and social exchange theories, we develop a model to understand how virtual proactiveness is perceived by leaders and coworkers. Using a round-robin design, we collected data from 281 respondents in 56 teams across three waves. The results show that affiliative and challenging proactiveness positively relate to leader-member and team-member exchanges. However, challenging proactiveness negatively affects team-member exchange, potentially leading to coworker envy. These findings shed light on the intricate social dynamics in remote working environments.     

Analyzing users’ activity in online social networks over time through a multi-agent framework

The number of people and organizations using online social networks as a new way of communication is continually increasing. Messages that users write in networks and their interactions with other users leave a digital trace that is recorded. In order to understand what is going on in these virtual environments, it is necessary systems that collect, process, and analyze the information generated. The majority of existing tools analyze information related to an online event once it has finished or in a specific point of time (i.e., without considering an in-depth analysis of the evolution of users’ activity during the event). They focus on an analysis based on statistics about the quantity of information generated in an event. In this article, we present a multi-agent system that automates the process of gathering data from users’ activity in social networks and performs an in-depth analysis of the evolution of social behavior at different levels of granularity in online events based on network theory metrics. We evaluated its functionality analyzing users’ activity in events on Twitter.