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Three essays on the value of online social commerce

University of British Columbia

Online social commerce is a new phenomenon at the intersection of social media and e- Commerce. While it triggers rising interest from practitioners, the progress of its understanding in academic research is delayed by conceptual and empirical challenges (e.g., multifaceted nature, interdependent users). This thesis aims to tackle these challenges to further the understanding of whether, under which conditions, and how socially infused settings enhance the quality of consumers’ experience. In Paper #1, I develop a view of social commerce that accounts for two key aspects of social media (i.e., they are supported by technological platforms, and they rely on social networks) as well as for the nature of the context (i.e., exchanges between consumers and business actors). This paper serves as a conceptual background for two studies that focus on consumers’ product search via social network (SN)-enabled shopping platforms. These two studies are conducted within a similar experimental environment that uses a custom-developed restaurant review site integrated with Facebook. In Paper #2, I analyze whether and under which conditions SN-enabled shopping settings are effective in facilitating experiences that are diagnostic (i.e., informative) and serendipitous (i.e., prone to unexpected but useful findings). I find that serendipity is a prominent benefit of SN-enabled platforms versus traditional ones, and that diagnostic and serendipity are both more contingent upon the size of shoppers’ friendship network when the platform is designed with private versus open boundaries. While Paper #2 focuses on design effects, Paper #3 concentrates on the effects of social ties. I explain how two properties of consumers’ social capital (i.e., quantity and quality) influence two important outcomes of consumers’ experiences: their perceptions of usefulness and enjoyment. I find that the three proposed intervening factors (mobilizing friends’ informational resources, effort reduction, and curiosity arousal) do not equally facilitate usefulness and enjoyment, which creates interesting future research avenue. In summary, this research contributes by: (1) offering a rich account of the social commerce phenomenon, (2) explaining why and how online social relationships matter, and (3) offering some methodological lessons for future investigations.

Text

2014-07-17

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/48386

Business Administration

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/