Understanding the Impact of Social Commerce Website Technical Features on Repurchase Intention: A Chinese Guanxi Perspective

1.IntroductionIn recent years, social media such as Facebook, Twitter, MicroBlog, and WeChat have progressively become an eminent strategic business distribution channel over the Internet. By June 2016, it is estimated that the number of Chinese online citizens has reached 710 million and that the users of MicroBlog and WeChat have reached 242 and 558 million, respectively [CNNIC 2016]. These figures mirror the ever-increasing prevalence of social media for organizations. With the distinct advantages presented by social networking sites, users have become more passionate about sharing commercial information and shopping online [Liang et al. 2011]. As such, online businesses can leverage these emerging technological platforms to establish and further solidify relationships with customers [Hajli 2014]. Through interactions with virtual community members, firms can access information that is valuable to the improvement of existing offerings and the development of new products [Fuller et al. 2006]. Social commerce, a term introduced by Yahoo in 2005, originated from the Internet company's Shoposphere service which combines community-based communication with word-of-mouth transmission. Social commerce pertains to the carrying out of business activities through social media. It is an extension of e-commerce and is facilitated by consumers' social interactions, which are established over social media [Kim and Park 2013]. The scope of connections among users has expanded via social media, leading to increasing transparency of information that facilitates the realization of transactions in social commerce [Yadav et al. 2013; Hajli 2014]. Social commerce can also be regarded as encompassing relationship-based online commercial activities [Stephen and Toubia 2010]. Relationship is of paramount importance in social commerce because it is an essential foundation on which social commerce is built [Liang et al. 2011]. In social commerce contexts, a critical goal of firms is to motivate consumers to make decisions upon social relationship generated on social media; such decisions help firms find valuable business opportunities [Wang and Zhang 2012]. Social commerce leverages social media to support interpersonal interaction, and its unique characteristics provide opportunities for consumers to make better purchasing decisions [Kim and Park 2013; Liu et al. 2016]. Therefore, establishing strong and quality relationships with customers is crucial for firms to achieve the success in social commerce.With the growing popularity amid a plethora of societal and organizational constituents, social commerce has piqued mounting interest in how trade can be merged with social connections for the purpose of establishing good buyer-seller relationships; these relationships eventually became one of the inextricable elements of social commerce [Zhou et al. 2013]. Extant research on the quality of relationship in social commerce has focused mainly on relational exchange (e.g., trust and commitment) in western cultural contexts [Chen and Shen 2015; Shanmugam et al. 2016; Zhang et al. 2016]. These studies reveal the values of relational exchange in social commerce [Liang et al. 2011; Hajli 2014]. Notwithstanding the relatively weak institutional and legal environments in eastern cultures, it is guanxi that is most salient in China [Lovett et al. 1999]. Nevertheless, guanxi has de facto received rather scarce attention in the emerging research context of social commerce. As such, there is a pressing need for further research to theoretically and empirically examine social commerce to expand our understanding of this new yet important paradigm. In addition, the concept of guanxi is a social-relational factor emphasizing a close and pervasive interpersonal relationship based on high quality social interactions and the reciprocal exchange of mutual benefits; it is a crucial element of buyer-seller transactions in China [Xin and Pearce 1996]. Guanxi helps facilitate commerce by lubricating business relationships with personal social connections [Lee and Dawes 2005], and guanxi has its own unique characteristics distinguishable from relational exchange in the West [Lee et al. …