Mobile Social Commerce: Current State and Future Directions

Abstract

With the sustained growth of the newly emerged market on mobile social applications such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, WeChat, WhatsApp, and Line, mobile social commerce is the subject of increased attention among practitioners and academics. However, there is no systematic study in the extant literature to evaluate the current state of this new research stream. This study is an attempt to fill the literature void. We reviewed literature on mobile commerce, social commerce, and mobile social commerce, and identified 27 journal articles on mobile social commerce from 2014 to 2019. We classified these articles based on journal types, publication years, researchers, research topics, theories employed, and study locations. We analyzed the trends of research on mobile social commerce, specifically those on Chinese consumers and firms. Potential topics for future research on mobile social commerce worldwide and in China are suggested.