Search

The buyer-seller relationship in live streaming commerce is crucial especially in service failure situations, yet it has been underexplored. In this paper, we reconceptualized the relationship between consumers and sellers in live streaming commerce as "parasocial guanxi", which consists of ganqing (emotional attachment), xinren (trust) and reciprocal value. The effects of parasocial guanxi on consumer dissatisfaction and complaint intention in service failure situations were further investigated based on the expectation confirmation theory. Our study involved 425 valid questionnaires and employed the partial least squares structural equation method (PLS-SEM). The findings are mixed: on one side, parasocial guanxi acts as a buffer, mitigating dissatisfaction and complaint intention in the face of product or service problems and reducing the impact of disconfirmation on consumer dissatisfaction. On the other side, it may also increase the likelihood of dissatisfied consumers complaining. Furthermore, the buffering effect weakens as consumers make more frequent purchases. The findings have important theoretical and practical implications for understanding the buyer-seller relationship in live streaming commerce. • This paper reconceptualized the buyer-seller relationship in live streaming commerce as "parasocial guanxi". • The effects of parasocial guanxi in service failure situations were investigated. • Parasocial guanxi has a buffering effect in alleviating consumers' dissatisfaction and complaint intention. • Meanwhile, parasocial guanxi can increase the likelihood of dissatisfied consumers to complain. • The effects of parasocial guanxi vary across different demographic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lacking the presence of human and social elements is claimed one major weakness that is hindering the growth of e-commerce. The emergence of social commerce might help ameliorate this situation. Social commerce is a new evolution of e-commerce that combines the commercial and social activities by deploying social technologies into e-commerce sites. Social commerce reintroduces the social aspect of shopping to e-commerce, increasing the degree of social presences in online environment. Drawing upon the social presence theory, this study theorizes the nature of social aspect in online SC marketplace by proposing a set of three social presence variables. These variables are then hypothesized to have positive impacts on trusting beliefs which in turn result in online purchase behaviors. The research model is examined via data collected from a typical e-commerce site in China. Our findings suggest that social presence factors grounded in social technologies contribute significantly to the building of the trustworthy online exchanging relationships. In doing so, this paper confirms the positive role of social aspect in shaping online purchase behaviors, providing a theoretical evidence for the fusion of social and commercial activities. Finally, this paper introduces a new perspective of e-commerce and calls more attention to this new phenomenon of social commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision justification provides assurance and reduces negative post-decision emotions, while simultaneously expends decision costs (i.e., cognitive effort). The current paper investigated the function of justification and cognitive effort related to regret, specifically in the online shopping context in two studies. In Study 1, 112 participants reviewed vignettes in a 2 × 2 within-subjects design involving cognitive effort (high versus low) and justification of action (easy versus difficulty), and reported the regret level when their purchase decision yielded subpar consequences. As expected, high cognitive effort and easy justification reduced regret. However, the effect of justification on regret was moderated by cognitive effort. In Study 2, 178 participants were randomly assigned to conditions in a 2 × 2 between-subjects design involving cognitive effort (high versus low) and decision justification (waste versus control). Participants followed a cover story and shopped for a laptop online; then they rated the regret level had they made an unplanned purchase. Results confirmed the hypothesis; regret was greater when justification was wasted. However, wasted justification only worsened regret when more cognitive effort was exerted. The current studies shed light on understanding an intricate dynamic between information processing and justification in relation to regret when shopping online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging retail culture is characterized by the extensive use of mobile technologies, high connectivity, ubiquitous computing and contactless technologies, which enable consumers to experience shopping differently. In fact, innovative mobile technologies provide new tools (apps) which are able to separate the moment of purchase from the moment of effective consumption, by allowing consumers to make purchases by mobile phone and collect them at home or at a store (a pick-up boutique or collection point), in addition to the traditional in-store service (purchase in the store and collect/consume in the store). The aim of this paper is to understand the extent to which mobile technologies have an impact on consumer behaviour, with emphasis on the drivers motivating consumers to adopt the consumer experience of mobile shopping. To achieve this goal we used a qualitative approach involving 29 consumers in the Italian market, where mobile shopping is still at an early stage. The findings shed a light on the extent to which consumers are moving from e-channels to mobile channels and take into account the effect of these technological innovations in retail settings from a cognitive standpoint, where studies are limited. The implications for researchers and practitioners are then discussed, with emphasis on retailers need to develop new mobile service competences, and integrate and synthetize physical retail settings with mobile opportunities and functionalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More and more online buyers turn to online reviews, while shopping, to get support in their choices. For instance, D’Avanzo and Kuflik (2013) show that more than 80% of buyers, while shopping online, expect user’s or professional reviews services, implemented on the seller’s website, that can be consulted before their purchase could take place. However, the diffusion of information, that buyers deal with during their shopping experience, makes room to the information and cognitive overload an out-and-out curse. All that is causing sellers adding Web decision support services to help buyers with their decision-making processes and there is a growing number of studies focusing on the enhancing of buyers online shopping decisions with the aim to improve their subjective attitudes towards shopping decisions. More and more sellers add on their side web decision support services that implement decision strategies employed by individuals to arrive at decisions and purchases. This paper introduces a cognitively based procedure (Gopnik et al., 2004) that mines users opinions from specific kinds of market, visually summarizing them in order to alleviate buyers overload and speeding up her/his shopping activity. The proposed approach emulates Vygotsky’s theory of zone of proximal development that is well-known in the collaborative learning community (Chiu, 2000). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The availability of customer reviews from smart tourism systems provides an interesting research opportunity to investigate the role of consumer’s perceived quality relative to a reference group on online satisfaction scores. This paper shows a positive relationship between the satisfaction score and the difference between the consumers’ perceived quality and the reference group’s quality level. The findings support comparison-level theory coupled with the product-based norm as a comparison standard, which posits that consumers use the average quality of the product’s reference group as the relevant comparison standard. Furthermore, consumers are found to be more sensitive to negative deviations from the reference group’s quality than from positive deviations, which is consistent with prospect theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Online services and applications extend the influencing opportunities of traditional word-of mouth (WOM). Unlike traditional word-of-mouth, the online environment allows for special features such as anonymity in user-generated content. Furthermore, the personality of online users affects their motivation when creating this content. The aim of this paper is to link specific online activities, i.e., the posting of product ratings and participation in discussions in online forums, with certain personality traits within an empirical study. The findings, based on an online survey with more than 16,900 completed questionnaires, indicate that opinion leaders in the online environment cannot be compared with traditional opinion leaders in terms of their articulation and personality structure. In regard to online activities with a high influencing potential, the results of moderated regression analyses show that persons with an introverted personality are more active as online opinion leaders due to the lack of social recognition they experience. The results have implications for how marketers should present incentive structures to address and integrate potential online opinion leaders, and how scholars should understand the role of opinion leaders in the online environment. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Social commerce has altered the consumption experience due to various interactive factors. Growing evidence stated that users are prone to buy impulsively in such an environment. Prior studies were limited to demonstrate the emerging role of social media celebrities and embedded social interaction in the context of impulse buying though users encounter them concurrently and frequently while browsing. Hence, this study investigated the influence of celebrities' post authenticity, sentiment polarity, observational learning, and impulse buying tendency following the latent state-trait theory. We have used the data of 452 Pakistani respondents to empirically investigate the research model collected via an online questionnaire from celebrities' community on Facebook. This study employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze data. The findings revealed that proposed constructs significantly influence the urge to buy impulsively. Further, impulse buying tendency moderates all relationships except negative sentiments. Unexpectedly, the moderation effects of celebrities' authenticity are insignificant. Furthermore, fsQCA results show the robustness of constructs towards urge to buy impulsively. The theoretical and managerial implications with limitations are provided in the paper. • Social media celebrities post and contextual interaction have a significant impact on impulse buying. • Latent state-trait theory was adopted for the research framework. • PLS-SEM was employed to analyze the data of 452 respondents collected via online questionnaire from Facebook.com. • Impulse buying tendency significantly interacts all relationships except negative sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sharing commerce is an e-commerce business model where service providers (who provide possession of goods) and customers (who acquire temporary ownership for a fee) are connected through commercial networking systems tailored by service enablers. Research on sharing commerce to date investigate key drivers of consumer engagement in sharing commerce platforms, but relatively little attention has been given to the role of trust, and trust formation. Drawing on the socio-technical theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of social and technical enablers on consumer trust and whether trust influences users' continued use and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) in the context of sharing commerce. Results of an empirical study (N = 211 active Airbnb millennial users) indicate that social referrals, information quality and transaction safety positively affect users' trust, which in turn facilitate their continued intention to use the sharing commerce platform and share positive word-of-mouth testimonials and postings thus sharing positive consumption experiences with other consumers. Results also suggest that transaction security is approximately four times more effective at increasing trust than social referrals and 2.68 times more effective at enhancing trust than information quality. • The definition and business model of sharing commerce is provided. • We explore social and technical enablers on consumer trust in sharing commerce. • Transaction security is most influential in increasing trust in sharing commerce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]