Establishing Consumer Trust in Social Commerce: Cognitive and Affective Appraisal

Abstract

ABSTRACT Consumers continue to rely on social commerce for shopping purposes; however, one challenge for businesses in effectively implementing social commerce is the lack of consumer trust. Thus, the goal of this study is to investigate the mechanisms through which social commerce companies can successfully build consumer trust and increase business. From the socio-technical perspective, we identify social commerce usability and sociability as the two technological and social functions, respectively, of social commerce. We investigate the impacts of social commerce usability and sociability on consumers’ cognitive and affective (emotional) appraisals, which in turn affect their trust and social commerce use. The empirical results indicate that social commerce usability and sociability are positively related to cognitive and affective appraisal, both of which positively affect customer trust in social commerce. The results also demonstrate the positive impacts of consumer trust on social commerce use. Our study advances the social commerce literature.