Paper Example on Social Commerce: Examining Trust Mechanisms for Modern Business

Chapter One

Introduction

In the modern business environment, sellers have changed to adopt new and advanced ways to sell their goods and services. Social commerce has emerged as a new platform that integrates social media features with the aspects of traditional business to enhance the purchasing experience of users (Han & Trimi, 2017). As many traders turn to use social commerce, the focus has turned on the trust mechanisms between the transacting parties. The concept of trust is essential in social commerce, considering that it influenced the behavior intentions of the consumers (Al-Adwan & Kokash, 2019). Customer to customer social commerce is an area that has grown rapidly, allowing customers to sell products to other customers through social media platforms. Even with the quick evolution of social commerce, C2C branch has been left behind, with many researchers focusing on transactions between the business organizations and their customers.

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Additionally, despite the increased reliance on Instagram as one of the social networking sites for the customer to customer social commerce, the area has not been examined. However, in customer to customer social commerce, trust is vital, considering the many factors that come into play (Al-Adwan & Kokash, 2019). Customer behavior intentions act as the driving force to influence the consumers to purchase the intended products. This research examines the trust mechanism in the context of the customer to customer social commerce to influence the behavior intentions of the consumers where Instagram is used as a social forum.

In social commerce, transactions and e-commerce activities are delivered through the social media environment, which includes social networks and web software. Experts in the area have identified social commerce as an opportunity for the people to engage in active marketing and selling of products and services through online communities such as Instagram (Hajli, Sims, Zadeh, & Richard, 2017). At present, rapid development has been observed in customer to customer social commerce with the expanding business scale. It has indeed become more common to engage in customer to customer social commerce anytime and anywhere using social networks.

Most of the popularly known social media platforms include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, which have often provided people with pervasive network connectivity for customers to engage in online marketing and selling activities (Han & Trimi, 2017). Instagram has gained massive growth in recent years because of its convenience to connect customers to other customers to participate in the transaction. For instance, in recent times, Instagram, as a giant business company, announced its growth to about 500 million monthly active users (Han & Trimi, 2017). Daily, about 300 million users are said to log onto the platform putting it at the front of social media marketing between customers (Hajli, Sims, Zadeh, & Richard, 2017). With this vast number of users, customers get an opportunity to post their products for other customers to see and discuss them through the same platform.

Research Statement

Social commerce has attracted little attention for research because it is a relatively new phenomenon with specific reference to the customer to the customer that has not been investigated. Previous research on the customer to customer social commerce has focused on aspects, such as continuous purchase intentions, service quality, and online impulse purchasing, and others (Baethge, Klier, & Klier, 2016). The trust mechanisms have, however, been left behind of customer to customer social commerce despite the important role it plays in influencing the behavior intentions of the consumers towards purchasing products.

It is, however, true that most individuals sell some products or offer services whose brands are not known, which makes it hard for consumers to believe such individuals (Al-Adwan & Kokash, 2019). Questions arise about the originality of such products, the authenticity, and their value. Such arising questions cause doubts that limit the purchasing behavior intentions of the customers towards online products. Thus, trust plays a critical role in this process, involving customer to customer social commerce by influencing their purchase intentions.

In C2C SC, the transaction process is between the consumers and other consumers. The consumer, however, needs to believe that the product they are purchasing will serve their needs and purpose if they have to acquire such products. The entire process has to be reliable because the product sold may have a brand that is not known, and even the individuals selling such products may not be familiar to consumers (Yrjola, Rintamaki, Saarijarvi, & Joensuu, 2017). Trust is not only essential in interactions with companies to develop the bond with consumers but also between the individuals taking part in transactions.

In the case where trust does not exist between the consumers and the individual seller, issues related to vulnerability, social complexity, and risk may come into play in consumer to consumer social commerce (Han & Trimi, 2017). These issues affect alter the behaviors of the consumers limiting their purchasing intentions. Ultimately, with these issues, there may be a reduction in the willingness of the customers to buy the products or seek for the services. In consumer to consumer social commerce, the individuals need to judge those selling products for them to make decisions. The judgment of the consumers, in this case, is based on the trust that they have built with the individual sellers (Hajli, Sims, Zadeh, et al. 2017). However, with the critical role that trust plays in consumer to consumer social commerce, the area has been understudied. Thus, the purpose of this study is to consider the trust mechanism in customer to customer social commerce towards influencing the behavioral intentions of the consumers in the case of using Instagram for transactions.

Study Contribution

The study will focus on the mechanisms of trust based on the trust transfer theory in the context of the customer to customer social commerce that involves the use of Instagram as the social media network site . Since there has been little study on the customer to customer social commerce, the outcomes of the study will significantly influence many decision making processes in the case of an individual to individual transactions. The study will reveal the role of trust in the business transaction and inform the parties the need to facilitate the trust aspect in the case of social commerce (Han & Trimi, 2017).

Most people involve in social commerce, but many have ended up losing their money and goods in the hands of con people for failing to consider a trust. The study will inform the parties in social commerce on how to ensure that the goods they buy are genuine and believe in the sellers. Similarly, since Instagram is an area that has little been studied, it will give reliable information to traders, including individual consumers, on the risk involved in transacting through Instagram. This will also allow the comparison between Instagram and other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn when it comes to achieving trust.

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Social Commerce

Despite being a relatively new phenomenon, there has been substantive research about social commerce that has now been well-established in the literature of marketing. Due to the continuous research on social commerce, subsequent researchers have been able to offer clarifications on various aspects of this area of marketing. According to Hajli, Sims, Zadeh, et al. (2017), social commerce is the delivery of transactions and e-commerce activities through social media platforms. The social media environment that is involved in this process included social networks and sometimes using web software. According to these authors, e-commerce is the main branch, but social commerce is its subset, and it involves the use of social media to help in activities and transactions of e-commerce (Stephen & Toubia, 2010). The views were echoed by Stephen and Toubia (2010), who examined social commerce as the forms of social media based on the internet, which allows individuals to engage in the selling and marketing of products actively through online communities and marketplaces. Various social media platforms have been associated with social commerce, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram (Han & Trimi, 2017). These platforms provide people with the connectivity to a network to enable them to participate in the sales and marketing activities online.

Baethge, Klier, and Klier (2016) also studied the concept of social commerce as a network that facilitates the interactions among the many actors. According to these authors, social commerce is different from e-commerce based on the scope of each area (Huang and Benyoucef, 2013). As social commerce draws its value from the interactions of actors, e-commerce facilitates the process of connection between the buyers and the sellers. It is more of bringing resources together among the actors to promote a value network. Vargo and Lusch (2016) extended their studies to understand how social commerce is integrated as a fundamental of service-dominant logic. The authors indicate that social commerce is executed among many actors that include people, businesses, organizations, and institutions. Through social commerce, these actors can exchange operant resources, such as ideas and information that forms part of marketing (Han & Trimi, 2017). Ultimately, integration is achieved between the buyer and the seller to exchanges products and services.

Literature has established the features contained in the social commerce as a market activity. Hajli, Sims, Zadeh, et al. (2017) observe social commerce to contain four layers that range from inside to outside. The segments include conversation that involves the exchange of information, the individual that described the activity of personal profile, commerce, and the community that allows the connection and support. For social commerce to co-create value for these multiple actors, all the four layers must be incorporated. As Huang and Benyoucef (2013) observed, this is what creates the distinction with e-commerce such that it only considers commerce as the outer layer and individual as the inner layer.

Further research has identified the different types of social commerce that are based on interactions among customers and communities. Huang and Benyoucef (2013) were, however, able to identify two of these types. First of these social commerce forms is the e-commerce based websites which web tools equip most. The tools are essential in enhancing the content generation for customers at the same time, allow the interactions among them. However, e-commerce based websites are limited when it comes to interactions since customers are not allowed to post comments on the reviews of other customers if they cannot be expanded any more (Leeraphong & Papasratorn, 2018). They are limited to things, such as creating communities and sending private messages.

The other type of social commerce is related to a web platform with e-commerce features, such as the pages created on Facebook (Yrjola, Rintamaki, Saarijarvi, & Joensuu, 2017). This type has been common and a target of many researchers who have studied social commerce platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. This study targets Instagram as one of the social commerce platforms th...