Antecedents of online purchase intention in the context of social commerce

Abstract

The present growth in the e-commerce platform has opened up social commerce (SC), which uses social media to enhance commerce using social interactions. A thorough literature survey led to the identification of s-commerce dimensions namely, ratings and reviews, forums and communities, recommendations and the referrals. In addition perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use was also identified as factors that may trigger intention to purchase. Trust in social commerce has been identified as a mediator in the relationship between social commerce constructs, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and intention to purchase. Stepwise regression was used to understand the strongest predictors of SC adoption. Mediation analysis is also used to establish the role of trust. The study found that trust acts as a mediator between: 1) social commerce construct; 2) perceived usefulness and intention to buy; 3) perceived ease of use and intention to buy. This study added a new construct and empirically tested the relationship among the constructs.