Social Commerce Success: Antecedents of Purchase Intention and the Mediating Role of Trust

Abstract

The past couple of years have witnessed the emergence of a new phenomenon known as social commerce, which incorporates the transactional aspect of e-commerce with social interactions. To date, little is known about how different factors namely; online social interactions, consumers’ engagement on social networks, perceived economic benefit and online brand awareness increase the purchase intention through social commerce. Moreover, the mediating role of trust within the social commerce literature needs further investigation. This study fills this gap by examining the duality of social commerce. It uses Structural Equation Modeling to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings show that the relationships between consumer engagement, brand awareness and intention to purchase through social commerce are fully mediated by trust. Social interactions have a direct positive impact on purchase intentions. Whereas, perceived economic benefit has a significant impact on both trust and intention to purchase through social commerce.