Social commerce information sharing and their impact on consumers

Abstract

With the rise of social commerce, new approaches such as sharing commerce in which the consumers, businesses and other stakeholders collaboratively perform various commercial activities and business interactions. Research relevant to information sharing activities in social commerce, the influence of trust on consumer behaviour, and intention to buy have been increasing in the past few years. However, most of the studies considered trust in a single dimension and its association with social, commercial, and technology factors. Investigating trust in the context of sharing commerce, a relatively new concept emerging in the recent years has been under researched. Focusing on this aspect, this study investigates the influence of trust in sharing commerce, social commerce information sharing, and perceived privacy risk on the intention to buy using a conceptual model reflecting the relationship between these constructs. Data was collected using an online questionnaire aimed at consumers from emerging markets in Asia through emails, and the data is analysed using PLS-SEM techniques. The results indicated that social commerce information sharing activities increases the trust in sharing commerce platforms and reduces perceived privacy risk, which can significantly improve the decision-making process and the intention to buy. This study demonstrates the link between social commerce information sharing, trust, perceived privacy risk, and intention to buy, and highlights the need to consider these constructs in social commerce research in emerging markets.