Investigate the Success Factors for Social Networking Site (SNS)-based Commerce

Abstract

The emergence of Internet technology leads to a new technology Web 2.0 which is the platform for social networking sites (SNS) has lead conventional electronic commerce (e-commerce) to shift to social commerce (s-commerce). The rapid growth of SNS, particularly in Malaysia, has attracted many online users to use SNS for socialization purpose and also for online shopping activities. Although SNS-based commerce is well accepted and the popularity is growing, there are limited studies conducted on investigating the s-commerce success factors. This study aims to investigate the success factors for SNS-based commerce from the Malaysian online customers’ perspective. The research conceptual framework was formed by cooperating the IS success model with social support theory, relationship perspective and product perspective, considering i) the “social features” and “customer generated content” of SNS-based commerce, and ii) SNS-based commerce users also become customers at the same time. The results indicate that product quality is the dominant success factor for SNS-based commerce. Product is the crucial reason why customers conduct online shopping. If the SNS-based commerce fails to adequate products to its customers, they will find SNS-based commerce not useful enough and will be unsatisfied. Social features quality and SNS-based commerce website quality are found to be the success factors for SNS-based commerce. Nevertheless, the size of their effect is smaller than product quality in affecting perceived usefulness and customer satisfaction. This suggests that system quality is a basic requirement must provide an interaction to support social climate in the associated communities in order to maintain a good relationship among users as well as provide service to support the delivery of product and its information. In addition, the results shed some light on the need of trust, confident and commitment of SNS-based commerce, adding value to the understanding of consumers’ behavior on SNS-based commerce.