Value Co-Creation and Trust in Social Commerce: an fsQCA Approach

This study aims to explain how value co-creation, between customers and companies, and key aspects of trust combine to influence customers’ purchase intentions in social commerce. Value co-creation is decomposed into two attributes, behavioral alignment, and empowerment and control, while trust is measured through the aspects of trusting beliefs, institutional trust, and disposition to trust. In order to examine the interplay of these factors and their combined effect on purchase intentions in social commerce, a conceptual model is developed and examined on a data sample of 379 users with experience in social commerce, through fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The findings indicate five configurations that lead to high intentions to purchase in social commerce, and three configurations that inhibit purchase intentions. The outcomes of the analysis show that value co-creation may be more important than trust in achieving high purchase intentions, while avoiding low/medium purchase intentions. This study contributes to the social commerce literature by demonstrating how value co-creation and trust interrelate and how their interplay influences purchase intentions.