A Comprehensive Literature Review of Acceptance and Usage Studies in the Social Commerce Field

Different studies have considered social commerce as a new paradigm in the field of business and commerce for about a decade and addressed the identification of factors affecting its acceptance. The present study sought to thoroughly review previous research related to the adoption of social commerce. For this purpose, a systematic review of the literature was used with primary and secondary search strategies by utilizing two approaches. First, two hundred sources were reviewed using criteria such as business transactions, social commerce approach, the applied social media, customer engagement cycle, value creation and value co-creation methods, as well as the type of business based on product or service offerings, the innovation space, the employed fundamental theories, and the research method of the studies. Then, the trends and findings from the observed results in the quantitative approach were analysed, followed by distinguishing three generations of social commerce acceptance studies that were conducted over this decade. The results revealed that trust, perceived usefulness, and socialization skills have the greatest impact on social commerce acceptance. Among the various platforms, social networks and microblogs, as well as some e-commerce sites equipped with social constructs were the most used cases in social commerce. The applied theories and models in acceptance studies varied extensively while the technology acceptance model, and the theories related to the planned behaviour, rational action, and social support were frequently used. In addition, different studies focused on user behaviour and the cognitive space of innovation and business-to-customer transactions, which mainly evaluated the sale of goods through social commerce while the scope of service provision was less prominent. Regarding the research method, most of the studies were non-experimental, descriptive, and survey and the main sources of the dissemination of social commerce acceptance research were journal articles.