Determinants of User Engagement in Social Commerce

The focus of this study is how social commerce engages users and encourages them to purchase. By proposing the concepts of user engagement as different ways to provide deep and meaningful experience, this study develops a model that explores the antecedents of user engagement and its role in explaining a user to purchase in social commerce. For this, this study surveys 352 users using social commerce in Korea and analyzes the data using AMOS 24. In the results, first, social capital including bridging social capital and bonding social capital and interpersonal influences including normative influence and informational influence increases user engagement. Second, user engagement increases their purchase intention. Finally, bridging social capital and informational influence among the antecedents of user engagement increases users' purchase intention through their user engagement. The findings contribute to research on social commerce by paying scholarly attention to meaningful engagement characterized by user engagement.