Factors influencing trust in social commerce: the case of Qatar

Abstract

The global spread of social media platforms, along with the technology acceptance, has contributed significantly in accelerating the birth of social commerce, which is one of the most prominent advancements of e-commerce. To keep up with the trend, online vendors or social vendors need to improve customers’ trust towards social commerce to enhance customer engagement, and to leverage the potential power of social networking. This research aims at studying the factors influencing trust in social commerce in the context of Qatar. The proposed research model adopted seven different factors that are assumed to influence trust in social commerce in Qatar. These factors include platform involvement (PI), information quality (IQ), perceived privacy protection (PPP), trust disposition (TD), informational support (IS), social commerce constructs (SCCs), and reputation of online vendors (REP). A sample of 320 valid responses was collected using a snowball sampling technique. Different statistical methods were performed, including multiple regressions for hypotheses testing. Four variables out of seven were found statistically significant in predicting the trust in social commerce, namely, the reputation of online vendors, information quality, platform involvement, and social commerce constructs. Based on the research findings, research and managerial implications, limitations, and future work were presented and discussed.