Factors and characteristics that influence consumers' participation in social commerce.
| Autor | Maia, Claudia |
Introduction
During the last few years, the growing popularity of social networking sites (SNS) has generated several changes, both socially and electronically, originating a new type of e-commerce, which has been changing the way online shopping has been done, called social commerce or s-commerce (Zhou et al., 2013, Chen and Shen, 2015). Social commerce promotes transactions with the support of a large network of online peers (formed by friends, colleagues, acquaintances or unknown people) who share electronic shopping experiences related to products and services information. In this environment, social media (represented by SNS and social shopping, blogs, Wikipedia, as well as content- sharing sites like the YouTube) combine different content generated by users through many social network resources to create, initiate and spread information within online networks (Tang et al., 2012). Social commerce is related, then, to the use of social media to perform business transactions and commercial activities driven mainly by social interactions and users contributions (Liang et al., 2011; Wang and Zhang, 2012).
The option for social commerce is given many times due to the amount of trustworthy information on certain products and services which are exchanged by their own members and that reflects mainly at obtaining the best prices in purchasing (Kim and Park, 2013). Social media users are encouraged to participate of social commerce, selling, comparing, recommending and sharing information about products and services in both online and offline marketplaces, and in communities. They can also exchange information with their friends and communities about product factors and characteristics that can help in purchasing decisions (Zhou et al., 2013). Nowadays, more than 90 percent of Brazilian internet users are connected to at least one social network, being Facebook the most used (Secretaria de Comunicagao Social, Presidencia da Republica, Brasil, 2015). According to Rakuten (E-commerce News, 2014), a company specialized in electronic commerce, 66.1 percent of people evaluate and recommend products regularly on social media sites, which shows the growing use of social media in the community interactions and electronic commerce activities (Hajli, 2015). The same report has identified, though, that some markets have seen "social fatigue" set, term used to indicate a drop in the number of people recommending products that they have bought on social networks (Lee et al., 2016).
From the perspective of the organizations, social commerce has a great potential to generate value from online social interactions between consumers (Stephen and Toubia, 2010). According to Burson-Marsteller (2013), 87 percent of the world's major companies are in at least one social network. In the academic field, social commerce has been identified as a relevant research theme, especially because of the potentially income generation for organizations (Turban et al., 2010). However, several companies that participate in the electronic commerce market are still trying to find out which factors influence consumers to participate in social commerce (Turban et al., 2010; Zhou et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2014), either buying, recommending, comparing or sharing information about products and services in online markets or communities. Overall, the majority of publications on this phenomenon appeared in commercial magazines, blogs, posts, industry reports and publications of practitioners, concerning the academic field at conducting studies dealing with its theoretical foundations, concepts and features, evolution and applied business models (Liang and Turban, 2011; Rosa et al., 2014; Friedrich, 2016; Busalim and Hussin, 2016).
Although some studies have empirically explored the main reasons of adopting social commerce by consumers, the literature does not present a clear understanding of which factors have influenced consumers to participate in social commerce, suggesting that new studies on this theme are needed (Turban et al, 2010; Zhou et al., 2013; Friedrich, 2016). Thus, assuming social commerce as a new and promising theme for future studies in business, as well as in the field of information systems, marketing and consumer behavior, we propose the following research question:
RQ1. What factors do influence consumers to participate in social commerce?
The research aims to analyze--in the consumers' perspective--the main factors and characteristics (personal or related to the purchased products) that influence consumers on their participation in social commerce, either by purchasing, recommending or continuing to use the website.
Literature review
This section provides an overview of social commerce, contextualizing its evolution, as well as the factors that have been highlighted in the literature as potential consumers' influencers in social commerce.
Social commerce
Recent advances in IS area and the emergence of the Web 2.0 technologies have brought new opportunities to electronic commerce (Hajli, 2015). The social connections and people interactions on the internet, especially in social networks, have developed e- commerce to social commerce, which has enabled companies to reach consumers with greater efficiency than traditional retail outlets by integrating user-generated content (Zhou et al., 2013).
Current literature provides a variety of social commerce definitions. Stephen and Toubia (2010) define it as a way of social media based on internet that allows people to actively participate in the marketing and selling of products and services in online markets and communities. The social networks on the electronic commerce are presented by the diversity of communication channels and available social features, such as products rating, feedback, forums, discussion groups, participant communities (in games) and rating about quality, reliability and approval, as the bottom Like on Facebook.
According to Liang and Turban (2011), the social commerce websites have three major attributes: the presence of social media technologies, community interactions and commercial activities, making possible the information exchange about products before the actual purchase. According to Rosa et al. (2014), there are two main forms of social commerce. The first one is characterized by sites of social networks that offer space for advertisement and transactions such as buying and selling products and services, opening its interfaces to facilitate this process, like Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. The second is characterized by traditional e-commerce websites that use social networking capabilities to take advantage of its power of reach and trust, like Amazon.com, Netshoes, Ponto Frio, Americanas, etc.
Factors that influence the participation of consumers in social commerce
Social commerce is closely related to e-commerce. In this sense, the basic theories used to explain the e-commerce adoption are also used to explain the participation of the consumers in social commerce (Liang et al., 2011; Wang and Zhang, 2012). Based on the IS literature, the participation in electronic commerce can be defined as "the consumers engagement in online exchange relationships with Web vendors" (Pavlou and Fygenson, 2006, p. 115).
In the case of social commerce, the participation of consumers includes both direct and indirect commercial transactions. Direct transactions refer to the consumer's buying behavior during the purchase phase of his/her decision-making process. On the other hand, indirect transactions include electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) referral activities within the defined purpose, information search, selection process and after-sales of customer decision-making process, being characterized by requests and business information sharing on social media (Zhang et al., 2014).
Aiming at identifying factors that influence consumers in the participation of social commerce, we found different studies addressing several aspects associated with this theme. In our search, we found a systematic review elaborated by Friedrich (2016), who identified in 61 academic publications a list structured by factors related to the adoption of social commerce by consumers (Figure 1). We also revised other studies, which completed the list of variables with those aspects not found on Friedrich's (2016) study.
One of the factors that have received most attention in the literature about social commerce is trust. Gundlach and Murphy (1993) suggest that the variable trust is the most accepted as basis for the human interaction and for the exchanging relations, making the person believe that the other part will perform their obligations without acting badly. In this sense, social commerce by including social interactions of the consumers can act as a tool to increase the trust on companies. Thus, it is understood that trusting a website can be an important factor that motivates the consumer to participate in social commerce.
The social commerce components are another relevant factor, being defined by Hajli (2013) as the presence of comments, ratings and reviews about products-- that are referred by many authors as the word-of-mouth. Berger (2014) defines word-of- mouth as an informal communication directed to other consumers about the purchase, use, characteristics of certain products and services or their sellers. This communication involves the exchange of information done directly between individuals, being positive or negative, not requiring any other means. The advances of the internet has extended consumer's options for collecting product information from other consumers and provides new opportunities for consumers to offer their own consumption-related advice by engaging in e-WOM (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). In this sense, Grund and Gurtler (2008) suggest that the system of recommendation comes up as an important instrument for the construction of the sellers' reputation...
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