The Power of Social Commerce: Understanding the Role of Social Word-of-Mouth Behaviors and Flow Experience on Social Media Users’ Purchase Intention

Abstract

Social commerce has emerged as a phenomenon that supports social interaction and user-generated content, allowing individuals to make informed purchasing decisions. This study aims to identify the antecedents of the sWOM behaviors present in social network sites (SNSs). Specifically, tie strength, homophily, trust, informational, and normative influence were included as sWOM antecedents. This study provides a deeper understanding of sWOM behavior in SNSs by identifying and analyzing separately three interrelated behaviors with distinct antecedents: opinion-giving, opinion-seeking, and opinion-passing. Additionally, flow experience is proposed as a less studied antecedent that interacts with all sWOM behaviors, and simultaneously, purchase intention. Our results suggest that flow experience, followed by opinion-seeking and opinion-passing, exerts the greatest influence on purchase intention. Additionally, our findings reveal that informative and normative influence are the analyzed antecedents that have the greatest impact on purchase intention. JEL Classification: M31.