Understanding Consumers’ Purchase Intentions in Social Commerce through Social Capital: Evidence from SEM and fsQCA

Social commerce has become a fiercely competitive environment. Understanding consumers’ purchase intentions can help social commerce platforms retain and attract more consumers. Social capital is one of the primary resources that plays a critical role in facilitating consumers’ purchase intentions i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research 2021, Vol.16 (5), p.1557-1570
Main Author: Yang, Xue
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brand loyalty
Commerce
Communication
Configurations
Consumer behavior
Consumers
Electronic commerce
fsQCA
Information sharing
Knowledge sharing
Language
Peers
purchase intentions
Purchasing
Social capital
social commerce
Social interaction
Social networks
Tacit knowledge
User generated content
Virtual communities
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Summary:Social commerce has become a fiercely competitive environment. Understanding consumers’ purchase intentions can help social commerce platforms retain and attract more consumers. Social capital is one of the primary resources that plays a critical role in facilitating consumers’ purchase intentions in social commerce. Here, complex relationships between different dimensions of social capital are further clarified and its impact on consumers’ purchase intentions are discussed. Based on a survey of 302 social commerce users, this study utilizes an SEM and fsQCA approach to validate the effect of social capital on consumers’ purchase intentions. The SEM results reveal that the effect of structural social capital on consumers’ purchase intentions is fully mediated by relational and cognitive social capital. The fsQCA results confirm the significance of consumers’ social capital as determinants and provide the configurations that can lead to high purchase intentions. Though previous studies have discussed the factors influencing consumers’ purchase intentions, this study takes the first step toward enhancing the understanding of the configurations that link dimensions of social capital to consumers’ purchase intentions in s-commerce using fsQCA approach.
ISSN:0718-1876
0718-1876
DOI:10.3390/jtaer16050087