Deciphering Social Commerce: A Quantitative Meta-Analysis Measuring the Social, Technological, and Motivational Dimensions of Consumer Purchase Intentions

Abstract

Social commerce, as a new business model, is becoming increasingly critical. Even though a large amount of literature examines the determinants of consumer purchase intentions, the evidence needs to be more balanced. Therefore, this quantitative meta-analysis aims to compare and confirm the research results on social commerce from 2010 to 2022 to reconcile the conflicting results. The results indicate that emotional support, relationship quality, and perceived value positively and strongly correlate with purchase intention. In contrast, technical factors (such as Information quality, System quality, and Service quality) exhibited a small influence. Also, we found that culture moderated the relationships between consumer purchase intentions and their causes, except for information support and interactivity. The moderator analysis suggests technical and motivational factors are more important in Eastern than Western culture. For Social factors, the effect size of Western culture is bigger on the relationships of social support, information support, and Emotional support. This study gives insight into the integration factors that affect the breadth and depth of customers’ buying plans, as well as future directions for research that will help management make decisions.