An Empirical Study of the Relationship Between Online Comments and Users’ Purchasing Behavior in the Social E-commerce

Abstract

Trusted social relationships can shorten users' thinking time when shopping, and social relationships and online comments play an important role in users' purchasing decisions. The mechanism of online comments effect on users' purchase behavior has been theoretically supported, but its mechanism of action in the context of social shopping still lacks empirical testing. Based on the social E-commerce environment, this paper focuses on the relationship between online comments and users' purchasing behavior, constructs a measurement model of the relationship between them, puts forward a research hypothesis, and comprehensively uses factor analysis, correlation and regression analysis methods to test the hypothesis. The empirical findings show that there is a significant relationship between online comments and users' purchasing behavior in the social e-commerce, and online comments mainly affect users' perceived value and trust through the quality of comments, quantity of comments and timeliness of comments. Based on the findings of the empirical study, this paper puts forward specific strategies for social E-commerce to improve online comments, including: paying more attention to the marketing value of online comments and capitalizing on them, paying close attention to the quality and timeliness of online comments and enhance the perceived value of online users, grooming a leader of online comments to increase online users’ trust. This study aims at providing decision-making references for social e-commerce merchants on how to effectively use online comments to increase consumers' purchasing behavior.