The Cross-Case Study Of Social Commerce Business Model Based On Grounded Theory

With the rise of Pinterest, third-party social shopping websites such as Mogujie,, Meilishuo are emerging. Traditional e-commerce websites like Fanke and Taobao also layout social communities to create marketing platforms for their customers. With the natural advantage of user base, social network websites are exploring their social commerce business model. Recently, Sina Weibo and Alibaba cooperate to develop social commerce business model based on their respective advantage. Social commerce has become a major trend of the Internet industry.Social commerce develops in two patterns, that is, e-commerce website socialization and social network commercialization. Different social commerce communities differs vastly in operating performance. While traditional social network like Sina Weibo and Renren suffer from poor profitability, rising star Mogujie and Meilishuo lead a great number of users and orders to e-commerce websites through links, thus creating a business model fit for their own development.Social commerce is a new phenomenon, little attention has been drawn on the researches of social commerce business model. Taking an exploratory perspective, we use Strauss’s three-phase approach based on grounded theory and build a business model structure of social commerce in5levels with9constructs. Then we analyze different operating mechanisms of different social network patterns and explore influencing factors of social commerce operating performance based on the business model structure. This study provides theoretical guides to researchers and practitioners to better understanding of social commerce business model.