A Comprehensive Study on Social Commerce in Social Networking Sites

Abstract

The study aims to examine user’s perceptions of the service quality of social networking sites (SNSs), contributing to customer satisfaction and usage intention leading to social commerce (s-commerce) intention. An online survey with a structured questionnaire was conducted to obtain contextual data, comprising 549 valid samples. The results indicate that outcome and environment quality have a significant influence on satisfaction, whereas interaction and outcome quality have a positive impact on usage intention of SNSs. Satisfaction is a noble indicator of usage intention; social capital and perceived trusts have a significant effect on s-commerce intention; and usage intention has the greatest influence on s-commerce intention. Perceived trust proves to be an important partial mediator between usage intention and s-commerce intention. Our results highlight the important role of service quality in behavioral perceptions of SNS users, shed much light on the social capital and s-commerce intention, and provide valuable contributions for understanding s-commerce behavior in SNSs context. The results of this study bridge gaps in SNS literature by demonstrating how s-commerce vendors or SNS practitioners can increase service quality, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and usage intention and thereby affecting the acceptance of s-commerce.