Article
The Impact of Social Commerce Features on Online Buying Behaviour
Social media has rapidly evolved into a crucial avenue for online shopping, leading to the emergence of social commerce. With the rise of social media platforms, the way people shop online has changed, and social commerce has become an important way for consumers to interact and make purchases. Social commerce involves social network features, user-generated content, and ecommerce capabilities that all enable shoppers to make purchasing decisions in digital social spaces. This study investigates the effect of social commerce elements on online purchasing. This research focuses on the key elements of social commerce affecting online shopping behaviour including customer reviews, ratings, recommendations, social sharing, influencer endorsements and interactive communication. This study investigates the effect of these attributes on the consumer's trust, perceived value, purchase intention and buying behaviour. The descriptive- and analytical-type approach is used to gain insight into the relations between social commerce elements and consumer behaviour in the digital marketplace. The study is based on the literature and current market trends, the mechanisms by which the social interaction and peer-generated information influences purchasing are identified. The results showed that social commerce has a significant positive effect on consumer confidence, which can decrease the information asymmetry felt by consumers as well as their sense of risk. Womens reviews and ratings become significant factors in purchase intent, social participation tools create greater product awareness and influencer recommendations create more credibility. The study also makes another interesting finding, namely the mediation effect of trust between the variables of social commerce features and online buying behaviour. Authenticity, transparency, and social proof can make a difference as consumers are more inclined to make purchases if they see this authenticity and transparency in the platform. As people become more dependent on mobile devices and social networks for various applications, the impact of social commerce on purchasing becomes even more pronounced. The results can be useful for marketers, online retailers and platform developers who want to better understand how to engage customers with their products and services and drive sales. Conclusions reach the following: The effective utilization of social commerce features can contribute to making the shopping experience more interactive, trustworthy and consumer-centric online; this can positively impact online buying behaviour and long-term customer relationships.
