People, Technologies, and Organizations Interactions in a Social Commerce Era

Abstract

Social commerce, a powerful combination of customer-oriented social computing technologies and new commercial features, is having an increasing impact on e-commerce, potentially generating substantial economic benefits. Drawing on socio-technical theory, this study establishes a research framework to help understand the social and technical factors affecting consumers' intention to purchase on social commerce sites. Our results demonstrate that familiarity, user experience, learning and training, and social commerce constructs all have a positive effect on consumers' perceptions of ease of use and usefulness, thereby enhancing their trust and intention to purchase. For systems designers and engineers, our results highlight the importance of social commerce features for building consumers' trust of social commerce sites and supporting their intention to purchase.