Trust Development and Transfer from Electronic Commerce to Social Commerce: An Empirical Investigation

Abstract

The development of social networking sites (SNSs) and Web 2.0 technology have given rise to a new electronic commerce paradigm called social commerce. Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce and uses SNSs for social interactions and user contributions to facilitate the online buying and selling of products and services. Recent years have witnessed the rapid growth of social commerce in China, but users are not willing to share their online shopping information and the intention to use social commerce is lower than traditional electronic commerce. So improving Consumers’ trust and use intention has become a crucial factor in the success of social commerce. Since social commerce users mostly are e-commerce users, this paper discusses whether trust on e-commerce can transfer to social commerce, and what are the factors influencing trust and trust performance of social commerce. The results of an empirical analysis based on a sample of 449 users with online shopping experience indicate that consumers’ trust in e-commerce has a significant positive impact on trust in social commerce and relative advantage; perceived relative advantage and result demonstrability positively affect customers’ trust in social commerce and trust in social commerce positively affects their intention to use; while perceived risk negatively affects a customer’s intention to use.