The surprising influence of social commerce service quality on purchase intentions mediated by e-commerce

Abstract

Social commerce has become a recent phenomenon and is poised to grow rapidly in the next few years. To better address customer behavior on social commerce platforms, it is imperative to acquire a comprehensive understanding of social commerce from the perspective of service quality. The objective of this research is to examine the dimensions of social commerce service quality and to reveal the factors influencing purchase intentions among the expanding user population. This study identified seven critical dimensions of social commerce service quality (website design, fulfilment, customer service, communication, contact, credibility, and security) that influence purchase intention. This research adopts a questionnaire survey method to collect data from social commerce users. Using PLS-SEM, the findings from an empirical analysis, conducted with a sample of 411 social commerce users, demonstrate that all measured dimensions significantly impact the intention to purchase. The findings also demonstrate that e-commerce has considerable influence on customer purchase intention as a partial mediator in social commerce. The findings hold significant implications for social commerce enterprises to increase customer attraction by identifying the motivations behind their purchasing decisions.