How Social Interaction Affects Purchase Intention in Social Commerce: A Cultural Perspective

Xicheng Yin,Qican Gu,Qiangwei Xia,Hongwei Wang

doi:10.3390/su11082423

Abstract

In the context of social commerce, the influence of culture on consumers’ behavior and attitude is more significant. This paper empirically analyzes the influence of social interaction (perceived risk, trust, and intimacy) on consumers’ purchase intention in social commerce, and the antecedent effect of cultural dimensions (uncertainty avoidance and individualism/collectivism) on social interaction is also explored. Data were collected in China and France from consumers who had prior online shopping experience on social commerce websites. The results show that the impact of perceived risk on subsequent purchase intention in social commerce will be transferred by trust and intimacy to a certain extent. The intimacy between users contributes to trust-building, and both of their positive impacts on purchase intention would show distinct effects in different cultures. Besides, cultural dimensions are proved to have a significant effect on users’ social interaction. Although high uncertainty avoidance brings perceived risk, it can promote subsequent trust-building. These findings help provide managerial insights for social commerce community to establish effective trust mechanism in a multicultural context.

Highlights

Social commerce is an emerging category of e-commerce based on social network services [1], and it is a user-centered business model which leverages frequent social interaction and massive user-generated content (UGC) to assist consumers in making purchase decisions
Empirical analysis is conducted to study the influence of social interaction factors on the purchase intention of Chinese and French consumers, and we explore the antecedent effect of cultural dimensions on social interaction
The following three types were considered as invalid questionnaires: (1) the answer time is less than one minute; (2) respondents who have never experienced social commerce; (3) and extreme answers such as always choose “totally disagree” or “totally agree”

Summary

Introduction

Social commerce is an emerging category of e-commerce based on social network services [1], and it is a user-centered business model which leverages frequent social interaction and massive user-generated content (UGC) to assist consumers in making purchase decisions. As a quickly emerged area of inquiry for both practitioners and researchers, social commerce is a potential paradigm shift in e-commerce [2], and its role in promoting the sustainability of business model has been widely recognized [1,3]. The study of purchase intention in traditional e-commerce is relatively mature, and perceived risk and trust are considered as two main factors affecting purchase intention and sustainable transaction [4,5]. The “sociality” characteristic of social commerce makes the influencing factors of purchase intention still a topic worth exploring

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