Exploring consumers’ impulse buying behavior on social commerce platform: The role of parasocial interaction

Social commerce, a recent branch of e-commerce, has made the experience of consumers on social commerce platform (SCP) different from other contexts, as the consumers have social interactions with each other. Growing evidence also shows that consumers on these platforms are prone to impulse buying behavior owing to the social interactions. However, existing research on online impulse buying was limited when illustrating the behavior of consumers on SCPs as social relationship constructs were not included. New theoretical developments are needed in regard to fill the research gap. In this research, parasocial interaction (PSI) theory is introduced in this research to examine the influence of social relationship factors on the formation of impulse buying behavior. An empirical research has been conducted on Mogujie (www.mogujie.com), one of the most popular image-sharing SCPs in China. Results indicate that PSI exerts an impact on impulse buying tendency, the social-relevant features of the SCP determine PSI, and perceived usefulness and PSI both significantly affect perceived enjoyment. In addition, consumers’ perceived enjoyment and impulse buying tendencies significantly affect their urge to buy impulsively. The implications, limitations, and discussions are provided.     

Customers’ purchase decision-making process in social commerce: A social learning perspective

The proliferation of social commerce has changed customers’ purchase decision-making process. However, few studies have investigated the roles of social commerce factors on customers’ purchase decision-making. Based on the social learning theory, we develop a research model to examine how customers’ learning behavior along three main social commerce components (SCCs) affects customers’ attitude in both cognitive and affective dimensions and how such attitude determines customers’ purchase intention. The results from a survey of 243 actual users of social commerce websites suggest that cognitive and affective appraisals are the main predictors of purchase intention, with cognitive appraisal having a higher predictive power than affective appraisal. In addition, learning from forums and communities and learning from ratings and reviews have significant influences on both cognitive and affective appraisals, while learning from forums and communities plays a more important role in formulating affective appraisal and learning from ratings and reviews plays a more important role in determining cognitive appraisal. Contrary to our expectation, learning from social recommendations has no significant influence on either cognitive or affective appraisal. In summary, these findings provide a comprehensive understanding about customers’ purchase decision-making process and extend the application scope of social learning theory. The findings also provide social commerce managers guidance in designing more effective websites and allocating resources and efforts reasonably on different SCCs.     

Exploring the effects of extrinsic motivation on consumer behaviors in social commerce: Revealing consumers’ perceptions of social commerce benefits

The rise of social media has created a new e-commerce platform called social commerce. In social commerce, e-vendors such as Amazon may integrate social media with their traditional e-commerce sites. Based on self-determination theory and social commerce literature, we develop a model illustrating how social commerce features may impact consumer behaviors and facilitate social commerce benefits from the extrinsic motivation perspective. We identify four types of extrinsic motivation including external motivation, introjected motivation, identified motivation, and integrated motivation; and we examine their influences on consumers’ intention to contribute social commerce information, which in turn leads to their subsequent behaviors and increases the perceived benefit of social commerce. We also consider the moderating effect of gender in the formulation of social commerce benefits. Based on longitudinal survey data from Amazon consumers, we find that 1) consumers’ external and identified motivation has a positive impact on intention to contribute social commerce information; 2) consumers’ intention is positively associated with their future behaviors, which in turn facilitate their perceptions of social commerce benefits; and 3) gender moderates the impact of behavior on social commerce benefits.     

The reflection of offline activities on users’ online social behavior: An observational study

The ever increasing presence of online social networks in users’ daily lives has led to the interplay between users’ online and offline activities. There have already been several works that have studied the impact of users’ online activities on their offline behavior, e.g., the impact of interaction with friends on an exercise social network on the number of daily steps. In this paper, we consider the inverse to what has already been studied and report on our extensive study that explores the potential causal effects of users’ offline activities on their online social behavior. The objective of our work is to understand whether the activities that users are involved with in their real daily life, which place them within or away from social situations, have any direct causal impact on their behavior in online social networks. Our work is motivated by the theory of normative social influence, which argues that individuals may show behaviors or express opinions that conform to those of the community for the sake of being accepted or from fear of rejection or isolation. We have collected data from two online social networks, namely Twitter and Foursquare, and systematically aligned user content on both social networks. On this basis, we have performed a natural experiment that took the form of an interrupted time series with a comparison group design to study whether users’ socially situated offline activities exhibited through their Foursquare check-ins impact their online behavior captured through the content they share on Twitter. Our main findings can be summarised as follows (1) a change in users’ offline behavior that affects the level of users’ exposure to social situations, e.g., starting to go to the gym or discontinuing frequenting bars, can have a causal impact on users’ online topical interests and sentiment; and (2) the causal relations between users’ socially situated offline activities and their online social behavior can be used to build effective predictive models of users’ online topical interests and sentiments.     

Promoting users’ intention to share online health articles on social media: The role of confirmation bias

Nowadays, it is a common practice for healthcare professionals to spread medical knowledge by posting health articles on social media. However, promoting users’ intention to share such articles is challenging because the extent of sharing intention varies in their eHealth literacy (high or low) and the content valence of the article that they are exposed to (positive or negative). This study investigates boundary conditions under which eHealth literacy and content valence help to increase users’ intention to share by introducing a moderating role of confirmation bias—a tendency to prefer information that conforms to their initial beliefs. A 2 (eHealth literacy: high vs. low) × 2 (content valence: positive vs. negative) between-subjects experiment was conducted in a sample of 80 participants. Levels of confirmation bias ranging from extreme negative bias to extreme positive bias among the participants were assessed during the experiment. Results suggested that: (1) users with a high level of eHealth literacy were more likely to share positive health articles when they had extreme confirmation bias; (2) users with a high level of eHealth literacy were more likely to share negative health articles when they had moderate confirmation bias or no confirmation bias; (3) users with a low level of eHealth literacy were more likely to share health articles regardless of positive or negative content valence when they had moderate positive confirmation bias. This study sheds new light on the role of confirmation bias in users’ health information sharing. Also, it offers implications for health information providers who want to increase the visibility of their online health articles: they need to consider readers’ eHealth literacy and confirmation bias when deciding the content valence of the articles.     

Investigating the impact of cybersecurity policy awareness on employees’ cybersecurity behavior

As internet technology and mobile applications increase in volume and complexity, malicious cyber-attacks are evolving, and as a result society is facing greater security risks in cyberspace more than ever before. This study has extended the published literature on cybersecurity by theoretically defining the conceptual domains of employees’ security behavior, and developed and tested operational measures to advance information security behavior research in the workplace. A conceptual framework is proposed and tested using survey results from 579 business managers and professionals. Structural equation modeling and ANOVA procedures are employed to test the proposed hypotheses. The results show that when employees are aware of their company’s information security policy and procedures, they are more competent to manage cybersecurity tasks than those who are not aware of their companies’ cybersecurity policies. The study also indicates that an organizational information security environment positively influences employees’ threat appraisal and coping appraisal abilities, which in turn, positively contribute to their cybersecurity compliance behavior.     

The impact of outsourcing strategies on companies’ intellectual capital

The aim of the paper is to analyse the effect of outsourcing on the intellectual capital of firms in the current turbulent environment. In particular, the paper will analyse the difference between cost-driven and strategic-driven outsourcing and their impact on human and organisational/relational capital. In addition, the paper will stress the differences in outsourcing of manufacturing and service firms. We propose an approach of literature review in order to develop a model of outsourcing for enhanced intellectual capital utilisation and competitiveness. This methodology puts in evidence that there are very few studies/analysis that stress the link between strategic outsourcing and its potential to increase in particular relational capital due to cooperation of two or more firms. The outcomes of the application will result in a theoretical model that can assist researchers, managers and consultants to better understand the link between outsourcing and intellectual capital and competitive advantage.     

What drives purchase intention in the context of online content services? The moderating role of ethical self-efficacy for online piracy

With the proliferation of online content service industry, understanding the factors affecting consumer intention to purchase online content services has become an important issue for academics and practitioners. While previous research has suggested that consumers’ perceived value and moral judgment are two main factors influencing behavioral intention to purchase online content services, few studies have explored what drives perceived value and if customers’ ethical self-efficacy will moderate the effect of perceived value on purchase intention. Thus, based on the value-based adoption model and previous literature, this study explores the antecedents of perceived value and the moderating effect of ethical self-efficacy for online piracy (ESEOP) on the relationship between perceived value and purchase intention in the context of online content services. Data collected from 124 respondents in Taiwan are tested against the research model using the partial least squares (PLS) approach. The results indicate that perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, perceived fee, and ESEOP have a significant influence on perceived value and that ESEOP can enhance the positive effect of perceived value on purchase intention. The findings of this study provide several important theoretical and practical implications for consumer online content purchase behaviors.     

Is social networking a waste of time? The impact of social network and knowledge characteristics on job performance

People use social media to help them solve problems and enhance performance. Users may engage in diverse social interactions online, increasing their knowledge base through both weak and strong ties. In this study we investigate the impact of social networks on job performance, focusing on knowledge quality and diversity based on social network theory and the knowledge-based view. The empirical analysis reveals that the strength of social network ties is strongly associated with knowledge quality in offline interactions, while social network diversity is associated with knowledge quality in online interactions. Knowledge quality acquired from social network has a significant impact on both creativity and productivity of job performance in the workplace. However, knowledge diversity acquired from diverse social network interactions is strongly associated with creativity, but not with productivity. The results of this study increase our understanding of the knowledge sourcing behaviors of workers.     

An empirical investigation of the utilitarian,social benefits in LBS information disclosure—The moderating effect of the gender based social role theory

The prior studies on information disclosure in location-based services (LBS) suggested that the perceived benefits of information disclosure in LBS were manifested by three benefits, namely, locatability, personalization, and social benefits. The three benefits might affect information disclosure intention differently. As an extension, individual factors, such as gender, may affect the relationship. However, according to literature, little research has investigated on the combined influence of the three benefits on the information disclosure intention in LBS with the gender as a moderator. Based upon the self-determination and social role theories, this study intends to bridge the gap empirically. The hypotheses are largely supported by 215 respondents. Unexpectedly, the research findings show that for females, locatability and personalization are more important in predicting their information disclosure intention, whereas for males, the social benefit has more of an impact on information disclosure intention, which is opposite to the hypotheses and convention. Furthermore, the research findings indicate that the behaviors of males and females may conform to the roles distributed within a society of this information age rather than to the personalities of the individuals. Finally, the implications are presented.     

Marketing analysis of wineries using social collective behavior from users’ temporal activity on Twitter

Marketing professionals face challenges of increasing complexity to adapt classic marketing strategies to the phenomenon of social networks. Companies are currently trying to take advantage of the useful collective knowledge available on social networks to support different types of marketing decisions. The appropriate analysis of this information can offer marketing professionals with important competitive advantages. This work proposes a new methodology to extract the social collective behavior of Twitter users concerning a group of brands based on the users’ temporal activity. Time series of mentions made by individual users to each company’s Twitter account are aggregated to obtain collective activity data for the companies, which is a consequence of both the company’s and other users’ actions. These data are processed using classical unsupervised machine learning techniques, such as temporal clustering and hidden Markov models, to extract collective temporal behavior patterns and models of the dynamics of customers over time for a single brand and groups of brands. The derived knowledge can be used for different tasks, such as identifying the impact of a marketing campaign on Twitter and comparatively assessing the social behaviors of different brands and groups of brands to assist in making marketing decisions. Our methodology is validated in a case study from the wine market. Twitter data were gathered from four regions of different countries around the world with important wineries (Italy: Veneto, Portugal: Porto and Douro Valley, Spain: La Rioja, and United States: Napa Valley), and comparative behavior analysis was carried out from the perspective of the use of Twitter as a communication channel for marketing campaigns.     

The power of talk: Exploring the effects of streamers’ linguistic styles on sales performance in B2B livestreaming commerce

B2B livestreaming has become increasingly popular, but few studies have investigated the role of streamers in these B2B livestreaming events. In contrast to the existing studies that explored the appearance and professionalism of streamers and focused on the B2C livestreaming commerce, this study analyzes how streamers’ linguistic characteristics relate to the livestreaming sales performance in online B2B marketplaces by conducting a streamer-level analysis. By combining deep learning and econometric analysis on a livestreaming dataset consisting of 915 livestreaming events across 14 industry categories from a B2B commerce platform, this study specifically examines the impact of three speech acts (i.e., assertive, expressive, and directive speech acts) on sales performance. We first extract three speech acts by combining Word2Vec and Bi-GRU network with Attention Mechanism (WBA), then use econometric models to examine the effect of the streamer's speech acts on sales performance, and finally explore the moderating roles of product-level factors (i.e., product novelty and product category). The results show that the assertive and directive acts have a positive effect on sales performance, but the expressive acts have a negative effect on the sales performance. In addition, this study also provides strong evidence that the effects of these speech acts on sales performance are highly dependent on the novelty of the live product. This moderating effect is particularly significant for sensory products.     

How does social support promote consumers' engagement in the social commerce community? The mediating effect of consumer involvement

This study aims to reveal the mechanism of how consumers’ engagement is established in social commerce communities. Building upon social support theory, we propose models and employ datasets obtained from Douban.com to empirically investigate the different effects of emotional and informational support on consumers’ engagement and how involvement mediates these relationships in the social commerce context. At the same time, the moderating role of product presentation is examined to help clarify the impact of social support and consumer involvement. Our analyses reveal that the two subdimensions of social supportive information are positively related to consumer involvement, together promoting consumers’ engagement in the community. In particular, involvement imposes a full mediating influence on emotional support but a partial mediating impact on informational support. Product presentation strengthens the effects in that the predictive effect of determinants on engagement is more pronounced for books with electronic versions in the social commerce community. For researchers and managers, these findings emphasize the benefits of the social commerce community, particularly with regard to Douban.com in China.     

How the emoji use in apology messages influences customers’ responses in online service recoveries: The moderating role of communication style

This research investigates the impact of using emojis (i.e., the pleading-face emoji) on customer forgiveness in relation to handling complaints on social media. Specifically, this research proposes that perceived firm sincerity and perceived firm empathy play mediating roles in the relationship between emoji use and customer forgiveness. In addition, the research identifies the moderating role of communication style in the proposed relationship. Results of three experimental studies indicated that the presence of the emoji in online complaint handling leads to an increase in perceived firm sincerity, which in turn increases perceived firm empathy and, subsequently, leads to customer forgiveness. The serial mediation effects (use of emojis → perceived firm sincerity → perceived firm empathy → customer forgiveness) were moderated by the service provider’s communication style. Specifically, the serial mediation effect occurs when an informal communication style, but not a formal communication style, is used. Furthermore, no difference exists in the research findings across different service types (hedonic vs. utilitarian).     

THE OTHERS: The role of individual personality,cultural acculturation,and perceived value on towards firm’s social media and acculturation orientation

This paper systematically examines (i) how individual personality can influence on cultural acculturation which can impact on the higher level of perceived value in LGBTs, and (ii) how the higher level of perceived value towards social media can result in being more satisfied, (iii) consequently having a better working life at workplace and performance proficiency. The generated framework was validated through a survey from multinational corporations in multi-industries such as higher education (with more than two campuses around the world), global fashion, global retailing, tourism, hospitality, food, and electronics and information technology. Key results, implications for managers and researchers are highlighted.     

Decoding digital transformational outsourcing: The role of service providers’ capabilities

The business process outsourcing industry has got disrupted, first by the significant shift in value creation activities from the clients to the service providers, and second by pervasive digital penetration, resulting in the emergence of Digital Transformational Outsourcing (DTO). Service providers now play a more significant role, making their capabilities important. In the new context, service providers require a uniquely different set of dynamic capabilities to handle end-to-end business functions on behalf of their clients while delivering digital value propositions.We study 26 of the largest global business process outsourcing providers to conceptualise and identify six dynamic capabilities of service providers salient in the new context, i.e., consultative, orchestration, insights, network management, knowledge access, and standardisation. Interviews conducted with industry experts provided evidence in support of the identified dynamic capabilities. A novel firm capability dataset was created using secondary data, and using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we identify configurations for high and low performance and find them to vary by the firm's broad/narrow scope.     

Political uncertainty and innovation: The relative effects of national leaders’ education levels and regime systems on firm-level patent applications

We explore the effect of political uncertainty on innovation. In particular, we examine the differential effects of two sources of uncertainty – leaders’ education levels and political regimes (i.e., presidential vs. parliamentary) – on patent applications. We posit that firms react to political uncertainty caused by the unexpected departure of a national leader by investing in patents as growth options. The empirical design analyzes a panel with information from over 62 million patent applications at the aggregated applicant level. Results show that leaders’ unexpected departures cause, on average, increases of approximately 9% in the aggregate growth of patent applications. We also find that the leader’s level of education and the country’s political regime system have significant effects on the relationship between political uncertainty and innovation. The difference between leaders with high and low levels of education accounts for 21% of the change in the growth of patent applications. Further, the effect of political uncertainty on innovation is amplified in presidential systems, which grant leaders more power and make electoral transitions less predictable. The differences between presidential and parliamentary systems account for approximately 16% of the change in the growth of patent applications. As a robustness check, we utilized a subsample of more than 170,000 firms with local and foreign patent applications, as well as a panel of over 5700 government non-profits, universities, and hospitals with local patent applications. Consistent with our theory, the former react to political uncertainty by investing in patents, while the latter remain unaffected. We contribute by showing the theoretical mechanisms linking leader and regime characteristics with patent applications.     

Approach or avoid? The dualistic effects of envy on social media users’ behavioral intention

People express themselves through posts or selfies with brands and activities on social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Instagram. This user-generated content provides adequate social information that may elicit the emotions of users who are exposed to such content on these online platforms. Although academic researchers have focused on factors affecting users’ emotions on SNSs, how users reconcile both positive and negative emotions to their attitude and behavior in triadic interactions remains unclear. The current study attempted to answer this research question through the lens of social comparison theory by investigating the effects of tie strength and focus of attention as two forces eliciting online social comparisons on emotional consequences measured through pleasure and envy. Moreover, the dualistic effects of the two distinct types of envy, namely benign and malicious, and the effect of pleasure on users’ approach and avoidance behavior were explored and hypothesized. The results indicated that strong ties triggered more benign envy compared with malicious envy. Furthermore, benign envy positively affected brand attitude and SNS avoidance in terms of exhaustion, whereas malicious envy negatively influenced brand attitude and increased the likelihood of SNS avoidance in terms of both exhaustion and discontinuance.     

Does the involvement of charities matter? Exploring the impact of charities’ reputation and social capital on medical crowdfunding performance

In recent years, charities have become involved in many online medical crowdfunding projects as fundraising agents. To reveal whether and why the involvement of charities influences medical crowdfunding performance, this study conducts a sequential exploratory-explanatory research design with two main studies. By collecting 22,805 projects from the Chinese Tencent GongYi platform, the first study utilizes propensity score matching (PSM) to investigate which type of initiators (individuals vs. charities) have better crowdfunding performance. The results show that the initiator type is an essential predictor of medical crowdfunding, and projects launched by charities keep better performance than those by individuals. Upon the findings of the first study, the second study is performed to inspect why charities make more contributions than individual fundraisers. The impacts of charities’ reputations and social capital on medical crowdfunding performance are examined based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and social capital theory. The results suggest that charities’ reputations and multidimensional social capital play essential roles in endorsing crowdfunding fundraising (fundraising performance) and appealing to donors’ attention (participation performance). In addition, the disease type moderates the relationship between charities’ reputation or social capital and crowdfunding performance. Our research provides in-depth insight into the impact of charities’ involvement on medical crowdfunding and generates important implications for medical crowdfunding practices.     

The relationships among consumers’ ethical ideology,risk aversion and ethically-based distrust of online retailers and the moderating role of consumers’ need for personal interaction

Consumer distrust is only recently beginning to be perceived as an important e-commerce issue and, unlike online trust, the nature and role of distrust is much less established. This study examines the influence of two important consumer characteristics (ethical ideology and risk aversion) on consumer’s ethically-based distrust of online retailers. Also, the moderating role of consumer’s need for personal contact with sales staff is tested. Results from 409 online consumers confirm that both relativist-based ethical ideology and risk aversion are strongly and positively related to consumers’ distrust. Interestingly, our findings show that positive effects of relativism and risk aversion on consumer’s distrust are moderated by consumers’ need for personal interaction, which is more pronounced for those consumers with a high need for personal interaction with retail salespeople.