Expert Journal of Marketing (May 2023)
Factors Impacting Repurchase Intentions in Social Commerce Platforms: An Innovative and Expanding Business Model
Abstract
Through information technology, the world is moving towards the digital economy, giving rise to social commerce. This type of marketing be considered a new form of e-commerce that incorporates a holistic approach to social media with the aim of helping users buy and sell products and services online. This empirical research aims to estimate the effects of the cognitive and emotional mechanisms of consumer trust and intimacy on repurchase in social commerce platforms. Thus, it aims to analyze in detail the behavior of consumers based on satisfaction and user-generated content, focusing on the moderating role of the buying habit between trust and repurchase, intimacy and repurchase. In this research, a quantitative study was conducted, targeting Morocco in order to analyze the effects of cognitive and emotional mechanisms on consumers' repurchase intention regarding social commerce platforms. Based on this, we studied the behavior of 3,854 social media users, 2,251 of whom have already made purchase on social commerce platforms. We employed econometric modeling using partial least squares-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results of the structural equation estimation on all individuals who have already purchased on online sales platforms (2,251), showed firstly that there is a significant and positive relationship between the cognitive factors (Satisfaction and Confidence) on the intention and the repurchase behavior. As for the emotional factors (UGC and Intimacy), the relationship between these two constructs was found to be non-significant. However, intimacy was found to positively impact repurchase intention and behavior under moderation of buying habits.
