Factors determining the perceived relevance of social commerce in the African context

Abstract

Background: This study determined factors influencing the perceived relevance of social commerce in the African context, in which Tanzania was chosen as a case for study. The motivation comes from the recent trend in which different service vendors take social networks as a platform for their business display, in conjunction with the use of mobile money and other online financial services in business facilitation. Objectives: The study determines factors influencing the perceived relevance of social commerce in the African context. Methods: The study used the survey strategy in its operationalisation. Only social media subscribers based in Tanzania formed the study population. It used the literature to identify the knowledge gap, followed by hypotheses formulation. Advanced quantitative models were used for testing the hypotheses. Results: Collectively, the following variables have a significant impact on the perceived relevance of social commerce: the effectiveness of order delivery, the perceived vendor’s response to queries, the perceived quality of online display, the perceived shopping convenience, the perceived rejection of returned goods and the perceived convenience of returning goods. Conclusion: Social-media-based commerce provides useful platforms to subscribers and vendors of different services. The approval rate is a good predictor of the future increase in the number of users across Africa, and Tanzania in particular.

Keywords

• social commerce
• social media based commerce
• mobile commerce
• social networks
• Tanzania, developing countries
• Africa
• e-commerce