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Top1. Introduction
The rise in Social Commerce has enhanced consumer behavior. Word-of-mouth has become stronger, and customers increasingly rely on contents posted by others for making decisions. The importance of social commerce is reflected in that 73% customer read user-generated content before making a decision about purchasing food (Bazaarvoice, 2011) and 40% customers purchase or lease a car after browsing at least one piece of user-generated content (Bazaarvoice, 2011). The buying decision process has also been enhanced, that 37% of shoppers find online social sources to be an influential driver in making decisions. This figure has been nearly doubled in a year (19% in 2010). Within social commerce environment, customers have access to social knowledge and experiences that support them to better understand their online purchase purpose and make more informed and accurate purchase decisions (Huang & Benyoucef, 2012). Thus, search results, user reviews, four-star ratings, text ads, image ads, news headlines, social shopping, rating and reviews, social recommendations, forums and communities, social media, and social advertising (Lecinski, 2012), which are called social commerce components (SCCs) (Mahmood Hajli, 2012), are an influential source of learning about products and services for making decisions.
Previous studies have examined the role of individual components on customer’s decision. For instance, Park, Lee, and Han (2007) examined the effect of online consumer reviews on consumer purchase intention; Li, Wu, and Lai (2013) proposed a social recommender system that can generate personalized product recommendations to aid customers’ decision; Animesh, Pinsonneault, Yang, and Oh (2011) found the influence of technological and spatial environments of virtual community on customers’ purchase behavior. Nevertheless, the roles of these SCCs in enhancing customers’ decision quality is not completely clear. The existing literature usually focus on one single social commerce component, which limits our understanding of the different roles of SCCs in aiding customers’ decision.