Dilek TAŞKIN
Uludağ University, Orhaneli, Bursa, Turkey
Çağatan TAŞKIN
Uludağ University, Görükle Campus, Bursa, Turkey
Ahmet Akif KARADAMAR
Uludağ University, Görükle Campus, Bursa, Turkey
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/EMAN.2018.996
2nd International Scientific Conference – EMAN 2018 – Economics and Management: How to Cope With Disrupted Times, Ljubljana – Slovenia, March 22, 2018, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS published by: Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans, Belgrade, Serbia; Faculty of Management Koper, Slovenia; Doba Business School – Maribor, Slovenia; Integrated Business Faculty – Skopje, Macedonia; Faculty of Management – Zajecar, Serbia, ISBN 978-86-80194-11-0
Abstract
Social commerce is a new form of social media-mediated commerce that allows customers to participate actively in the marketing and selling of products in online marketplaces. Social media such as Instagram provides a digital trade platform for their users. In spite of Instagram’s commerce potential, because of the lack of face-to-face interactions and customers’ suspicion of the truthfulness of the social commerce vendor, perceived risk of social commerce intent increases. Thus, it is important for social commerce vendors to know the relationships among the antecedents of social commerce intent. In the literature, there are few studies that explore the relationships among the antecedents of social commerce intent from vendor characteristics and platform (Instagram) perception. Thus, this study tries to contribute to this field.
The aim of this study is to explore the relationships among social commerce intent and its antecedents (product differentiation, reputation, perceived ease of use, habit and trust) on Instagram users. Instagram has great commerce potential for vendors. In spite of this, it has a limited market share in Turkish digital economy. This study intends to help Instagram vendors develop more effective digital marketing strategies.
The research sample consists of Instagram users who bought anything from Instagram in the last three months. Data were collected in the months of December of 2017 and January of 2018. A total of 289 survey responses from participants, were collected. Based on the initial screening of the collected questionnaires, 31 of them were excluded as they were inappropriate. PLS-Sem method was used to test the research model. The scale of Yahia et al. (2018) was adapted for the antecedents of social commerce intent.
The findings of the research showed that all of the dimensions except habit were found to have statistically significant influence on social commerce intent of Instagram users. In addition, trust dimension had the highest influence on social commerce intent and reputation dimension was found to have the highest influence on trust. According to the modelling results several digital marketing strategies were proposed. This study provides useful implications for both academics and practitioners in digital economy. It is so important for online vendors or companies to know the most important antecedents of social commerce intent in order to allocate their resources effectively and develop goal-oriented marketing strategies.
Key words
Digital economy, Instagram, marketing strategies, social commerce intent, trust, PLS-Sem