Interpersonal relationship building in social commerce communities: considering both swift guanxi and relationship commitment

Abstract

The booming of social media facilitates the popularity of social commerce. In social commerce communities, relationship building is rather crucial. In this study, we consider both swift guanxi and relationship commitment to explore the interpersonal relationship building process in social commerce. Collecting 972 valid responses of social commerce community members, we identify four bond-based antecedents of swift guanxi, namely familiarity, interpersonal similarity, interactivity and personal information, which are all positively associated with swift guanxi. We also demonstrate that swift guanxi exerts a significant positive effect on relationship commitment, unveiling the process of relationship building between members in s-commerce communities. Furthermore, we also verify that swift guanxi has a significant positive impact only on social word-of-mouth (sWOM) adoption behavior, but not on sWOM behavior; while relationship commitment has reverse impacts, which are very interesting findings. Founders of social commerce communities may use these findings to promote the building of social commerce communities.