Influence of Trust on Social Commercial Behavior – Taking WeChat as an Example

Abstract

The development of science and technology as well as the internet have brought changes to our daily lives. In addition, with the widespread use of social media, more and more people are using social platforms to connect with colleagues and serve business activities. This study takes WeChat, a specific social media platform in China, as an example to study how personal social relations influence personal consumption behaviour in the digital media era through WeChat users’ daily use experience. This study adopts a mixed method. First, it tests users’ perception based on cognitive and emotional factors through 122 questionnaire surveys. Then, the users’ experiences from their participation in social enterprises are gathered through 10 semi-structured interviews, and subsequently, the relationship between personal relations and social enterprises are analyzed. Finally, after data collation and analysis, it can be concluded that trust is the core relationship quality and also the basis for promoting the development of social business activities. At the same time, since social business activities rely on social relations, the development of swift guanxi is conducive to the realization of repurchase behaviours in social business relations.