Seller creative selling in social commerce

Abstract

Social commerce has gained substantial attention from both academics and practitioners. Many studies aim to understand consumer behavior in social commerce. However, little attempt has been made to investigate the social commerce phenomenon from the seller’s perspective. Focusing on sellers, this study explores the drivers of seller creative selling and empirically tests the effect of seller creative selling on seller business performance in social commerce settings. Using multi-sourced data, including primary survey data and secondary trade volume data from a large social commerce marketplace, the authors find that seller creative selling significantly enhances seller business performance. Further, community information support from other users on the marketplace, and business support from the marketplace platform, contribute to sellers’ creative selling behavior. In addition, seller tenure with the marketplace weakens the positive relationship between community information support and seller creative selling. These findings highlight the key role of seller creative selling for successful social commerce platforms and provide guidance for nurturing seller creative selling by managers of such websites.