Linking passion to performance in the social commerce community: The role of collaborative information exchange

Abstract

The proliferation of social commerce has enabled millions of passionate entrepreneurs to launch businesses. Yet, literature is sparse regarding whether and how passionate entrepreneurs succeed in this new context. Through an in-depth analysis of the social commerce community, this study articulates the role of collaborative information exchange as one behavioral mechanism through which entrepreneurial passion translates into performance. Using both primary survey data and secondary store traffic and trade volume data from a social commerce website, the authors find that collaborative information exchange partially mediates the effect of passion on entrepreneurs’ business satisfaction (subjective performance) and fully mediates the effect of passion on store traffic and trade volume (objective performance). This study deepens our understanding of entrepreneurial passion by identifying an important mechanism that is specific to the digital entrepreneurship domain and provides practical implications to both individual entrepreneurs and social commerce platforms.