Building on the stimulus-organism-response model, this paper aims to fill the considerable research gap by developing a deeper understanding of social commerce as a global emerging phenomenon and investigating the effectiveness of social commerce marketing stimuli and its consequences on consumer behavior on Instagram. The study adopts a mixed-methodology approach, including a web-based survey and a focus group interview, to build a deeper understanding of the phenomenon and account for the social aspects of social commerce. Based on a sample of 317 international consumers, the analysis demonstrates that all dimensions of social commerce marketing stimuli have significant effects on online brand engagement on Instagram; which consequently positively influences brand trust and online purchase intention. Moreover, the focus group interview complements the findings and provides potential explanations for the discovered relationships.

With the rapid innovation of information technology and online service, the Internet as a new media has drastically changed the online behavior of human interaction. Microblogging that limits the number of characters allowed in a post to 140 words has emerged as a new and frequent communication via web postings. Microblogging has been used not only for social interaction but also for marketing and product promotion by companies and organizations. As the development of social community services become more mature, the new concept called ¡§social commerce,¡¨ that combines social networking and online shopping appears to be a promising new business model. The purpose of this study is to examine the usage behavior of microblogging by investigating the effect of social support and other factors on the intention to continue use a microblog and the intention to accept social commerce. An online survey was conducted on Plurk users. The results indicate that: (1) the motivations for writing blogs, social support and website quality have significant influences on the relationship quality between users and Plurk. Higher perceived social support and higher website quality result in a higher level of relationship quality; (2) The motivations for writing blogs and the perceived social support increase the self-disclosre behavior; (3) The perceived social support and website quality have positive impact on social commerce intention; and (4) The motivations for writing blogs, website quality, relationsip quality and self-disclosure have positive impacts on the intention to continue use the microblog.

Social commerce is a growing field due to the popularity of social media. Research on social commerce stresses the benefits of utilizing social media or Web 2.0 technologies for business because user contribution, participation and collaboration, which are characteristics of Web 2.0, fuel business vitalization. Nevertheless, there is a lack of academic research on social commerce, and in what little research there is, the coverage is circumscribed. One of the challenges is conceptualization of social commerce due to various definitions made from researchers’ different perspectives and different positions on social commerce. This also led to the limitation of scope of research. In addition, there is still a need for identifying technological features and business goals for social commerce. Therefore, this research primarily encompasses establishing the concept of social commerce and identifying its implementation methods. To amount to those two primary goals, the research objectives are to understand the factors that affect social commerce implementation; to identify and investigate applicable Web 2.0 technologies that enable social commerce activities; and to investigate the business goals that can be achieved by social commerce implementation. Ultimately, the research aims to address methods of implementation. Consequently, the achievement of this research is that first, the concept of social commerce has been established by refining several definitions from the literature. Second, social commerce activities and business goals were identified and categorized based on the marketing funnel concept and the new customer life cycle model. Third, applicable Web 2.0 technologies were identified from the literature and other functionalities were also seized from real cases. Finally, the concept of social commerce has been demonstrated by implementing selected various commerce applications

Social commerce is a growing field due to the popularity of social media. Research on social commerce stresses the benefits of utilizing social media or Web 2.0 technologies for business because user contribution, participation and collaboration, which are characteristics of Web 2.0, fuel business vitalization. Nevertheless, there is a lack of academic research on social commerce, and in what little research there is, the coverage is circumscribed. One of the challenges is conceptualization of social commerce due to various definitions made from researchers’ different perspectives and different positions on social commerce. This also led to the limitation of scope of research. In addition, there is still a need for identifying technological features and business goals for social commerce. Therefore, this research primarily encompasses establishing the concept of social commerce and identifying its implementation methods. To amount to those two primary goals, the research objectives are to understand the factors that affect social commerce implementation; to identify and investigate applicable Web 2.0 technologies that enable social commerce activities; and to investigate the business goals that can be achieved by social commerce implementation. Ultimately, the research aims to address methods of implementation. Consequently, the achievement of this research is that first, the concept of social commerce has been established by refining several definitions from the literature. Second, social commerce activities and business goals were identified and categorized based on the marketing funnel concept and the new customer life cycle model. Third, applicable Web 2.0 technologies were identified from the literature and other functionalities were also seized from real cases. Finally, the concept of social commerce has been demonstrated by implementing selected various commerce applications

The use of mobile devices and social media has been increasing dramatically and becoming critical for B2C businesses. Such businesses need to consider implementing e-commerce services in the mobile environment with social integration to satisfy their customers’ needs. Concepts like mobile commerce and social commerce are already being used extensively by many businesses. However, there are no clear guidelines in the literature on how to use mobile and social characteristics together for B2C e-commerce. Fusing these two concepts is what we call mobile social commerce (ms-commerce). In this thesis, we performed a thorough literature review to identify the characteristics of ms-commerce. The findings enabled us to first devise a proper definition for ms-commerce as the concept of performing online commercial activities in a mobile environment with the help of contributions from customers. Second, elements of the building blocks of ms-commerce, namely business models, m-commerce and s-commerce were identified based on commonly accepted fundamentals of the related concepts. Each building block has a critical role in increasing the value and efficiency of the product/service being delivered online by B2C businesses. We propose a mobile social commerce design framework along with a modular design model consisting of a generic class diagram that can be used for designing and developing ms-commerce applications that fit the specific needs of businesses. Businesses can choose the right elements to integrate in their ms-commerce application with the purpose of increasing the efficiency and integrating the social participation of customers. Three different scenarios were devised, and three mobile app prototypes were developed to support them, using the design model of our proposed framework. Finally, in light of our experience in developing ms-commerce applications, we discussed and contrasted the three different mobile development strategies, namely native, hybrid and web-based.

User interface usability in social commerce is an important theme today because many businesses are evolving with use of social media in order to easily reach larger markets.  The study was based on the fact that online shoppers and their purchase success depend to the great extent  they can interact with the interface(usability). Therefore, it is important for companies to attend to the users' online consumer purchase behavior. The purpose of the study is to discuss which interface design requirements can enhance usability that can improve consumer behavior in social commerce. The methodology of social constructionist paradigm, a deductive research approach with investigation from multiple exploratory cases was used. For extension of knowledge about the topic both secondary and primary data with interviews was followed. The findings show that the social commerce companies are still facing some challenges because they still lack some of the suggested requirements which hinders the usability of their interfaces. Moreover, they believe that some requirements are not be as important as others. The companies can use these findings to apply and harmonize this frame of requirements into their user interfaces in order to achieve usability that promotes consumer behaviors since they can now realize that the few requirement they never attend to limits the usability of their websites.

Att använda sociala medier som marknadsföringskanal, även kallat social commerce är ett växande fenomen då många företag idag använder sig av detta. Den nya marknaden har även möjliggjort att nystartade företag (startups) nu kan använda sociala medier som plattform för att växa och nå ut till sina kunder snabbare. För att kartlägga hur nystartade företag marknadsför sig på sociala medier används Kotlers marknadsmix. Inom marknadsmixen fokuseras på de 4P: Produkt, Pris, Plats och Påverkan. Syftet med denna studie blir därmed att beskriva och analysera hur ett startupföretag som använder sociala medier som säljplattform (social commerce) arbetar med marknadsmixen. Det empiriska materialet samlades in genom intervjuer med företaget Hemmafys, samt egna observationer av deras sociala medier och hemsida. Materialet analyserades sedan med hjälp av marknadsmixens 4P och en slutsats av detta var att platsen roll minskat i samband med social commerces framväxt. Studien kom även fram till att det är essentiellt för företag att aktivt kommunicera med sina kunder och vara lyhörda för att de ska överleva på den digitala marknaden. Slutligen lyfte studien vikten av att företag måste vara beredda att ändra om sin marknadsföring om företaget befinner sig på en marknad där det är svårt att konkurrera genom produktens egenskaper.

Purpose - This study provides an updated understanding of effectuation in the new tech start up era of social commerce; specifically, it answered two questions: (1) How does a social commerce startup entrepreneur make decisions? (2) Why is it successful so far? Importance - It aims to contribute to the academic research on social commerce startup education. Methodology - Using a single case in-depth study, followed closely by the theory of effectuation in comparison with causation, to determine the behaviors of the observed. Limitation - The analysis provides detailed insight into these perspectives and suggestions for future research. Further studies on startup companies backed up with different sources and examinations on several startups together over a longer period of time are recommended to draw comparisons. Keywords - Effectuation in Entrepreneurship, tech startups, social media, social commerce, Berlin

Yes / This study aims to build on the understanding of social commerce in the emerging markets and how it influences online community engagement. The conceptual model was proposed using theories including the social support theory, the trust theory, the social presence theory, the flow theory and the service-dominant logic theory. Using Facebook online community, the data were collected from 400 respondents from Jordan and analysed using AMOS based structural equation modelling. Results revealed that social commerce constructs positively influence social support, community members’ trust and social presence. Furthermore, it was found that social support and social presence positively affect community members’ trust. We also found that community members’ trust positively influence flow whereas both community members’ trust and flow positively influence community engagement.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:23:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Gustavo Hildebrand Ferrara.pdf: 2443099 bytes, checksum: 8ca2bc8823a69ce69da12f06cd371a12 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-10-31 / The social networking on the internet has contributed to changes in commerce, being increasingly used by companies, as a channel of direct communication with the target audience, enabling the appearance of so-called social-commerce. Thus, the social-commerce has provided an interesting solution for companies and individuals who built their business through e-commerce platforms, thus enabling the construction of a closer relationship between customers and companies. Large, medium, small companies, and especially microentrepreneurs, started to sell their products through these e-commerce platforms on social networks. These have the benefit of the appearance of applications that professionalized the company-client relationship. More and more popular, social networking platforms on the internet began to offer a number of features and applications that facilitated the management of online business, as well as promoting the dissemination of products, promotions, launches, the search for market information for both captation trend lines, as well as in the competition analysis. Also allowed market niches rather practically inexistent, to become profitable. Customers, in its turn, through social networks on the Internet have amplified their search capabilities, enabling the comparison of several similar products, prices, and find out about product characteristics, information through the experiences of other users in relation to products and services. This research was developed with the objective to analyze the contributions of social networks on the Internet for electronic commerce, resulting in businesses models called social-commerce. It was also sought in this research, to explore, describe and characterize the online business models, e-commerce, Amazon.com, the Internet social networking and social commerce. Finally, an analysis was done about how social networks on the Internet are characterized, influenced and allow the generation of a sales platform that has as main characteristic the e-loyalty, e-satisfaction and e-trust. For this purpose were used works of authors such as, Argenti, Goosen, Jenkins, Kotler, Osterwater, O'Reilly, Pisani and Piotet, Anderson, Qualman, Recuero, Slack, Santaella and Lemos, Cruz, among others who have studied electronic commerce and social networks. Were, also, used researches conducted by Nielsen, IBM, CETIC, IMF, IBOPE, SEBRAE, EBIT, US Departament of Commerce, among others, to obtain data confirming these contributions of social networks on the Internet as an efficient and effective platform to sell products, services, and also reach new market niches, new customers enabling micro, small, medium and large size businesses to emerge / As redes sociais na Internet contribuíram para mudanças no comércio eletrônico, sendo cada vez mais utilizadas pelas empresas, como um canal de comunicação direta com o público-alvo, viabilizando o surgimento do chamado social-commerce. Assim, o socialcommerce proporcionou uma solução interessante para empresas e pessoas que estruturaram seus negócios através de plataformas de e-commerce, possibilitando assim, a construção de um relacionamento mais próximo entre clientes e empresas. As empresas grandes, médias, pequenas, e, principalmente, os microempreendedores, passaram a vender seus produtos através dessas plataformas de e-commerce nas redes sociais. Esses contam com benefício do surgimento de aplicativos que profissionalizaram o relacionamento cliente-empresa. Cada vez mais populares, as plataformas de redes sociais na internet passaram a oferecer uma série de recursos e aplicativos que facilitaram a gestão dos negócios online, além de favorecer a divulgação dos produtos, das promoções, dos lançamentos, das buscas de informações sobre o mercado, tanto para capitação de linhas de tendências, como também, nas análises da concorrência. Permitiram ainda que nichos de mercado, antes, praticamente inexistentes, passassem a ser rentáveis. Os clientes, por sua vez, através das redes sociais na Internet, tiveram seus recursos de busca amplificada, possibilitando a comparação de diversos produtos semelhantes, preços, além de informar-se sobre características dos produtos, obter informações através das experiências de outros usuários em relação a produtos e serviços. Alvitramos a presente pesquisa com o objetivo de analisar as contribuições das redes sociais na Internet para o comércio eletrônico, resultando nos modelos de negócios denominados social-commerces. Buscou-se ainda nessa pesquisa, explorar, descrever e caracterizar os modelos de negócios online, o comércio eletrônico, a Amazon.com, as redes sociais na Internet e os social-commerce. Por fim, fez-se a análise de como as redes sociais na internet se caracterizam, influenciam e possibilitam a geração de uma plataforma de vendas que se tem como principal característica a e-lealdade, e-satisfação e a e-confiança. Para isto foram utilizados trabalhos de autores como, Argenti, Goosen, Jenkins, Kotler, Osterwater, O´Reilly, Pisani e Piotet, Anderson, Qualman, Recuero, Slack, Santaella e Lemos, Cruz, dentre outros que estudaram o comércio eletrônico e as redes sociais. Utilizou-se, também, de pesquisas realizadas pela Nielsen, IBM, CETIC, FMI, IBOPE, SEBRAE, EBIT, U.S.Departament of Commerce, entre outras, para obter dados que comprovassem essas contribuições das redes sociais na internet como uma plataforma eficiente e eficaz para se vender produtos, serviços, e ainda, atingir novos nichos de mercado, novos clientes possibilitando o surgimento de novos negócios de micro, pequeno, médio e grande porte