| Humans inherently have strong needs for socialization,and these needs also exist in the shopping process.In e-retailing,it is interesting to know if a retailer can improve sales by creating social presence on webpage in order to satisfy customer’s social.Recent research has proven that social presence has an effect on customer’s purchase behavior.In this study,we focus on the influence of social presence of e-retailer’s webpage,and examine the impact of social presence under different conditions on customers’purchase intention.Specifically,we investigate if product category(experience product vs.search product)and customer gender(male vs.female)moderate the effect of social presence on customer’s purchase intention.We also examine the mediating role of customer trust.Since the GIF images have been broadly used in product introduction pages,we designed a new way to manipulate social presence,which uses different GIF images to manipulate the social presence.Two studies using a single factor group design and two studies using 2X2 factorial design were conducted to test the hypothesized relationships.The findings suggest that when human body and gesture appeared in the GIF image,customer’s perceived social presence was enhanced.Second,higher social presence leads to higher purchase intention,and trust play a mediating mechanism for explaining the effect.Third,when buying experience products,social presence significantly enhances consumer’s trust in the seller and their purchase intention.However,social presence does not influence purchase intention when buying search products.Finally,we found that customer gender does not affect the strength of the effect of social presence on purchase intention.Our research results can guide online sellers to adjust their product introduction pages properly,so that they can provide proper social presence that the consumer need,establish trust with customers and increase sales.What’s more,we use GIF images to manipulate social presence,which makes it easier to apply our finds in practice. |
