title: The Drivers of Social Commerce: A Broad View of the Factors That Predict Intention to Buy
Creators: name: Alghamdi, Ali Saeed
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: social commerce
subject: consumer behavior
subject: social commerce intention

description: The revolution of innovative technologies has changed almost every aspect of human lives. These technologies have been used in various contexts, for instance, in the business context. More people have moved from conducting business activities in a traditional way to leveraging what technology offers. Selling activities, for example, have benefited from technology innovation, where merchants use e-commerce tools, and more recently, social commerce (SC) concepts to compete and gain competitive advantages. This use of technology is not restricted to business owners and practitioners, it has also been offered to consumers. In some cases, such as SC, both businesses and consumers exploit a set of technologies. The notion of SC basically embraces two concepts: e-commerce activities and human social interaction on virtual settings. SC acceptance and growth has been captured due to its perceived benefits for both merchants and consumers. It has offered sellers great opportunities where real-time data can be used to obtain consumer satisfaction, which in turn leads to financial advantages. On the other hand, it enables consumers to look for more options with the aid of technologies that facilitate interactions with wider communities whereby better decisions can be made. However, prior research indicates that the acceptance and adoption of SC is dependent on different factors. There have been numerous attempts to study which factors, for instance, impact consumers’ intention to buy via SC. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to studying which factors affect the adoption of SC from various points of view. That is, SC is believed to be a complex setting where multiple disciplines intersect; thus, it has to be investigated wisely, by not neglecting major factors that may affect the adoption. Consequently, this research aims to address this issue by examining, from a broader view, consumer behavior in adopting SC. Simultaneously, one of the research objectives is to investigate the factors that support the pursuit of achieving successful implementation of the “Vision 2030” in Saudi Arabia. This vision includes several initiatives that aim for economic growth. From these initiatives, the initiative for using digital economy is highlighted in this research for its relevance. Promoting the use of SC for both local sellers and local consumers is considered part of the digital economy initiative. However, there is a revenue leakage to SC platforms that reside outside of Saudi Arabia’s borders, which does not support the goal of economic growth. Thus, this research points toward addressing this issue, with practical recommendations to be communicated to concerned government departments and merchants. Thus, the main research question designed to address the above-mentioned aims is “What are the key factors that influence consumers’ adoption of SC in Saudi Arabia?”. The objective is to determine the broad view of how the process of adoption is built from a consumer’s point of view. Identifying the factors that are considered the key predictors of consumers’ intention to buy, along with exploring some of the relationships between these predictors are the objectives of this research. Obtaining such a broad view prompted careful selection of the study’s methodology. The pragmatic philosophical paradigm, which functions as an umbrella of this study’s methodology, advocates the employment of “what works” to achieve the goals and objective of a research. Thus, the methodology and research design chosen for this study represent what works to attain a desirable broad view. A sequential explanatory design was employed in this research, where both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Quantitative The drivers of social commerce methods were used to test and validate the model proposed in this research, whereas qualitative methods were employed to provide a more in-depth understanding of certain circumstances that remained unexplained from the quantitative outcomes. The study’s quantitative sample was collected in Saudi Arabia, with 1,012 complete responses. The qualitative study sample (11 participants) comprised two groups: consumers and experts. Employing a set of statistical procedures, the results showed that, with the exception of subjective norms and electronic word of mouth, all other factors were predictors of social commerce intention (SCI). Attitude was considered the most important predictor of SCI, as well as a central factor that could be changed by the effect of other factors in the study’s model. The impact of trust on SCI was amongst the weakest significant impacts. The explanation for the case of trust, and for the cases of the insignificant impact of subjective norms and electronic word of mouth was investigated by employing qualitative methods. The interview data showed that there were moderators that might affect the impact of such factors. This research makes a number of contributions. Theoretically, the extension to the theory of planned behavior advances and enriches the literature because it incorporates factors and introduces new relationships that show significance. Practically, insights from this research can be conveyed to different parties, such as government departments, sellers, and companies. These practical implications are expected to contribute to supporting the goal of achieving the economic growth stated in the Saudi Vision 2030. There are a number of limitations of this study, for instance, the unspecified definition of the trust factor. Lastly, this study provides directions for future research, such as using and augmenting the model presented in this study in other contexts, conducting research while ensuring the trust factor is fully defined, and comparing the initiatives that are provided by The drivers of social commerce governments with initiatives provided by commercial institutions (i.e., online payment gateways).