Social Commerce: An Empirical Examination of the Antecedents and Consequences of Commerce in Social Network Platforms

This paper studies a pioneering venture of integrating e-business with social network platforms and seeks to understand the antecedents and consequences of “social commerce”. In particular, we conduct an econometric analysis examining how the characteristics of the users and their social networks affect their decision to participate in this novel service. Based on the empirical results, we find that the social neighbors of the users and their economic behavior, the brand loyalty of the users, and their familiarity with the platform have significant effects on the likelihood of social purchases. Additionally, we build predictive models in order to both identify the effective disseminators of information and discover their distinguishing characteristics. Finally, we both contribute to the related literature, discovering new rich findings, and provide actionable insights with major implications for brands and marketers who would like to generate direct sales on social network platforms and orchestrate wordof-mouth.