Online social enterprise customer behaviour: influences of e-commerce, social media, and altruism on online impulsive buying

Abstract

Many studies have considered online consumer behaviour topics. The growth of e-commerce and social media leads us to examine their effects on online customer behaviour, especially online impulsive buying behaviour. In addition, online customers buying commercial and social enterprise (SE) products are likely to be different, as they have different attitudes towards organisations and brands. Thus, this study investigates the association between SE customers’ attitudes towards online platforms (e-commerce and social media) and impulsive buying behaviour and examines the effect of SE customers’ altruism on such behaviour. Furthermore, it evaluates whether the tendency to buy impulsively mediates the association between SE customers’ attitudes to e-commerce and online impulsive buying behaviour. This study tests the mediating effect of impulse buying tendency on SE customers’ attitudes to social media and impulse buying behaviour. It also examines the role of impulse buying tendency as a mediator between SE customers’ altruism and impulse buying behaviour. We researched 423 SE customers in Thailand using survey data. The analysis method is structural equation modelling with AMOS. Results are discussed regarding the hypothesised relationships and mediating effects. The guidelines for academia and their implications are outlined.

Keywords

• Social enterprise
• online impulsive buying
• e-commerce
• social media
• altruism
• Len Tiu Wright, De Montfort University Faculty of Business and Law, United Kingdom