Understanding Consumers’ Purchase Intentions in Social Commerce through Social Capital: Evidence from SEM and fsQCA

Xue Yang

doi:10.3390/jtaer16050087

Abstract

Social commerce has become a fiercely competitive environment. Understanding consumers’ purchase intentions can help social commerce platforms retain and attract more consumers. Social capital is one of the primary resources that plays a critical role in facilitating consumers’ purchase intentions in social commerce. Here, complex relationships between different dimensions of social capital are further clarified and its impact on consumers’ purchase intentions are discussed. Based on a survey of 302 social commerce users, this study utilizes an SEM and fsQCA approach to validate the effect of social capital on consumers’ purchase intentions. The SEM results reveal that the effect of structural social capital on consumers’ purchase intentions is fully mediated by relational and cognitive social capital. The fsQCA results confirm the significance of consumers’ social capital as determinants and provide the configurations that can lead to high purchase intentions. Though previous studies have discussed the factors influencing consumers’ purchase intentions, this study takes the first step toward enhancing the understanding of the configurations that link dimensions of social capital to consumers’ purchase intentions in s-commerce using fsQCA approach.

Highlights

Nowadays, online transaction has shifted from electronic commerce (e-commerce) to social commerce (s-commerce), which emphasized social interaction and interpersonal communication [1,2,3]
Traditional statistical methods focused on the net effect of independent variables on dependent variables and the results showed that the different causal path can result in the same outcome, whereas the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method took a step forward to clarify the configurations of conditions that may result in an outcome, more importantly, the presence and absence of the outcome, respectively, may be caused by different reasons [87,88]
Purchase intentions is fully mediated by relational social capital (RSC) (β = 0.366***, p < 0.001, f2 = 0.198) and cognitive social capital (CSC)

Summary

Introduction

Online transaction has shifted from electronic commerce (e-commerce) to social commerce (s-commerce), which emphasized social interaction and interpersonal communication [1,2,3]. Traditional websites added social functions to encourage content generation and improve consumers’ experience. Online business process in s-commerce was facilitated by social media, especially social networks sites [4]. Consumers created user-generated content, shared their purchasing, and spread product-related information with their friends in social network sites [5,6,7]. Consumers’ purchase decisions in s-commerce relied on peer consumers’ shopping experience, eWOM, and recommendations [8,9]. Social features were foundations of s-commerce because online purchase was facilitated by the social relationships among peer consumers [10]. Social capital was one of the primary resources that played a critical role in facilitating consumers’

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion