Exploring the motivations of social commerce: A perspective of consumer shopping value

Abstract

Recently, due to the social networking sites (SNS) users continue to grow, social commerce has been addressed as an important issue by scholars and practitioners. However, the motivations of social commerce intention are unclear. This study aimed to explore the motivations of social commerce intention based on the perspective of consumer shopping value and the model of goal-directed behavior. Given that social commerce has the feature of social and commercial, this study firstly investigated the influences of social, hedonic, and utilitarian motivations on social and commercial desires, respectively. Then, the impacts of both desires on social commerce intention were examined. This study was conducted by survey method. The results revealed that social and hedonic motivations could arouse SNS users' social desire; whereas utilitarian motivation could evoke SNS users' commercial desire. Both commercial and social desires would lead to social commerce intention. Based on the research findings, this study finally provided some discussions and suggestions for firms and SNS service providers to enhance SNS users' social commerce intention.