Investigating The Impact Of Social Commerce On Consumers' Shopping Intentions Using Social Presence And Social Support Theory

Social commerce provides an opportunity to consumers to access sellers,share their opinions,and make precise shopping decisions,all of which develops a more reliable and sociable online business environment.From the social commerce perspective,a key objective of businesses is to motivate consumers to make decisions through social affiliation generated on social commerce platforms;such decisions assist organizations to locate valuable business ventures.Therefore,this dissertation focuses on consumers' shopping intentions in social commerce environments,particularly how businesses can shape consumers' shopping intentions.This topic is of great significance for deeply understanding the consumers'shopping intentions formation process in social commerce environments.Previous studies have attempted to explore the fundamental dynamics of consumers'shopping intentions in social commerce environments using different theories or models,for example,the technology acceptance model,the theory of planned behavior,and the theory of reasoned action.The statistical results of these studies have largely failed to integrate social factors and mooring effects;therefore,these studies cannot draw a holistic picture of the formation mechanism of consumers' shopping intentions in social commerce environments.Consequently,based on the cognitive-affective-conative model,this paper highlights the role of social factors(i.e.,social presence,and relationship quality),consumers'trust in sellers,social commerce constructs(i.e.,reviews,ratings,referrals,and recommendations),familiarity and mooring effects(i.e.,conformity and personal experience)as an essential aspect to explain consumers' shopping intentions in social commerce environments.Drawing upon social presence and social support theory,together with the literature review on consumers' shopping intentions in social commerce environments,this dissertation in-depth discusses the research questions through the following three sub-studies.First,based on informational support and social presence theory,the first study underlines the viewpoint that which dimension of social presence plays significant role in developing consumers trust in online merchants and how does information support moderates the relationship between different social presence dimensions and trust in social commerce.Further,the influence of consumers'trust in online merchants is examined on shopping intentions.Next,drawing upon social support and social presence theory,the second study further examines the role of social commerce constructs by integrating social presence as moderator in the model to explain consumers' online shopping intentions in Chinese context,where lack of trust on comments from other consumers being considered the growing concern towards the success of social commerce.Finally,based on social presence theory,relationship marketing and mooring effects,the third study highlights the role of social factors by integrating mooring effects as moderators to provide some theoretical understanding and practical implications.The data was collected through self-administered questionnaires in different cities of China,e.g.,Shanghai,Guangzhou,Beijing,Nanjing,Hefei etc.The survey was managed with the help of research students who had experience of data collection.The main target population included those who were close to shopping malls and universities.Respondents were first asked if they had shopping experience of social commerce(e.g.,peer-to-peer,group buying,and peer recommendations)through Wechat,Weibo,and Little Red Book(as these are the popular social commerce platforms in China).The data was analyzed through Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modeling(PLS-SEM).This dissertation mainly draws the following conclusions through empirical analysis.Firstly,this paper reveals the validity of all three dimensions of social presence.Further,the statistical results of structural model confirm the positive effect of consumers' trust in online merchants on consumers' shopping intentions.Moreover,the results show that information support is not positively moderating the relationship between social presence through consumers' interactions and consumers' trust in online merchants,while information support moderates the effect of the other two dimensions on trust.Secondly,the results of this study confirm that social commerce constructs enhance consumers' perception of social support and social presence.In addition,the findings validates the relationship between familiarity and consumers' trust in sellers.Further,social presence had a moderating influence on the relationship between social support and consumers'online shopping intentions.Also,the results demonstrate that social presence significantly affects the formation of consumers'trust in online sellers.Thirdly,findings extend the existing literature on social presence and relationship quality,by examining the direct relationship between social presence and consumers'shopping intentions in social commerce environments.Further,the statistical findings validates our hypothesis that personal experience negatively moderates the positive relationship of social presence and consumers'shopping intentions in social commerce environments.This dissertation contributes theoretically,by the following three aspects.Firstly,by integrating social support theory,social presence theory,relationship marketing,and mooring effects,expands the existing marketing literature boundaries by providing a new theoretical base for predicting consumers' shopping intention in social commerce environments.That will open a new window for scholars to examine the consumers'behavioral intentions in the context of social commerce.Secondly,conformity as a moderator strengthens the influence of social presence on consumers' shopping intentions in social commerce environments.Thirdly,this paper re-defines three dimensions to transmit the sense of social presence from the perspective of the specific way people feel the sense of social presence,namely,consumers' interactions,interactions between consumers and merchants,and interactions between consumers and commodities.From practical standpoint,this study provides useful insights for the social media marketers and sellers to understand social features that shapes the consumers' shopping intentions in social commerce environments.