A Comprehensive Literature Review of Acceptance and Usage Studies in the Social Commerce Field

Nasibeh Pouti, Mohammad Taghi Taghavifard, Mohammad Reza Taghva, Mohammad Fathian
2020 International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies  
Different studies have considered social commerce as a new paradigm in the field of business and commerce for about a decade and addressed the identification of factors affecting its acceptance. The present study sought to thoroughly review previous research related to the adoption of social commerce. For this purpose, a systematic review of the literature was used with primary and secondary search strategies by utilizing two approaches. First, two hundred sources were reviewed using criteria
more » ... ch as business transactions, social commerce approach, the applied social media, customer engagement cycle, value creation and value co-creation methods, as well as the type of business based on product or service offerings, the innovation space, the employed fundamental theories, and the research method of the studies. Then, the trends and findings from the observed results in the quantitative approach were analysed, followed by distinguishing three generations of social commerce acceptance studies that were conducted over this decade. The results revealed that trust, perceived usefulness, and socialization skills have the greatest impact on social commerce acceptance. Among the various platforms, social networks and microblogs, as well as some e-commerce sites equipped with social constructs were the most used cases in social commerce. The applied theories and models in acceptance studies varied extensively while the technology acceptance model, and the theories related to the planned behaviour, rational action, and social support were frequently used. In addition, different studies focused on user behaviour and the cognitive space of innovation and business-tocustomer transactions, which mainly evaluated the sale of goods through social commerce while the scope of service provision was less prominent. Regarding the research method, most of the studies were non-experimental, descriptive, and survey and the main sources of the dissemination of social commerce acceptance research were journal articles. qualitative approach attempts to describe the obtained trends and analyses in the three generations of studies related to social commerce acceptance. These three generations represent the rapid changes over the last decade regarding accepting social commerce. Finally, the research gaps were evaluated based on the observed trends and several implications were recommended as well. The present exploratory systematic review aimed to find all the scientific studies which evaluated social commerce adoption during 2010-2018. During the planning phase of the present SLR and using a pilot study, the following questions were developed for data extractions. Q1. What are the theoretical foundations of social commerce acceptance studies? Q2. What is the approach taken in social commerce acceptance studies based on the applied platform? Q3. What are the types of research methods used in social commerce acceptance studies? Q4. What are the considerations for business, customers, and innovation space in social commerce acceptance studies? Q5. What is the geographical focus of social commerce acceptance studies? A quantitative and qualitative analysis approach was used to answer the abovementioned questions. The quantitative analysis dealt with the multiplicity of components and the time distribution of applications and the qualitative analysis sought to discover the observed trends and the evolution of social media use in businesses. The intended indicators in the quantitative analysis included the components which demonstrated the differentiation of studies such as the focus on the type of the applied media, business approach to media use, business transactions. Additionally, the other components encompassed the used basic theories, the type of focus on the adoption process, attention to the customer engagement cycle, and the stages of value creation and value co-creation. The observed trends and the results were qualitatively analyzed after performing quantitative analysis. The gap analysis is considered as one of the important outputs of the analysis phase in this research, which can be considered in future studies. SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW PLAN Based on the evidence-based software engineering (EBSE) policy, three phases were proposed for the systematic review of literature including planning, implementation, and reporting the results [7] . During the planning phase, an official protocol was created to conduct a systematic review of the literature. This protocol contained the details of the research strategy, which was based on research questions, inclusion/exclusion criteria, quality assessment criteria, data extraction strategy, along with data synthesis and analysis guidelines [8]. The protocol was pilot tested for evaluating the perfectness of the search string and the correctness of inclusion/exclusion criteria and data extraction guidelines of the present study [9]. After pilot testing, the updated version of the protocol was sent to two external reviewers who were considered as experts in the field. The reviewers recommended some changes regarding the research question, followed by incorporating inclusion/exclusion criteria related to the scope of SLR into the protocol. Then, the steps of the protocol were redefined during the implementation phase. The following subsections explain the planning phase of the review. 122 International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies Primary Search Guidelines The primary search guidelines included the following steps: 1. Extracting the main search terms based on research questions; 2. Performing a pilot study to extract relevant terms, as well as synonyms and substitution options which were used in some literature (Table 1); 3. Concatenating terminology using the Boolean operators to create a search string (Table 2) ; 4. Performing search based on the Boolean string obtained in a search engine like Google, leading to numerous scientific databases; 5. Hand-checking manually the results of the search until the density of the obtained results on each page was zero; 6. Selecting a range of online databases, journal archives, and conference proceedings for the initial analysis of the search results; 7. Retrieving the citations and abstracts of the results and managing these features using the EndNote. Considering the research question, the following three major terms were identified for the searching process, including social commerce, adoption, and customer. Based on the major search terms, the alternative terms were identified (Table 1 ) and the terms were linked to formulating the search string. In addition, the string was customized for different online databases based on their interface requirements while keeping the logical order consistent. Pouti, Taghavifard, Taghva, and Fathian 123 • Articles published before 2010. Step 2. Based on the papers obtained from Step 1, the abstracts were evaluated only to exclude studies which had the following characteristics: • Not directly or indirectly related to the field of social commerce or the adoption of social media in the business; • Not following any empirical research method; • Ph.D. dissertation and master theses published from the research covered by the theses were available and included in the review. Step 3. Duplicate articles were removed from the previous citation by selecting the selected filter. However, the conferences and editions of the publications were reviewed for repetitive publications and only the articles of the journals or articles with more details of the study were selected, which included the final results. Although the present study failed to review the quality of the articles at this stage, it determined and dealt with the quality of the evaluation and data extraction of articles which were of poor quality or scientific or literary theft. Secondary Search Guidelines To ensure not to lose any of the related studies, secondary search guidelines were designed by conducting the following steps: Step 1: The references of all included studies were reviewed based on the retrieved results. Then, all the qualified citations were applied with the same selection criteria. Step 2: Regarding the results in Step 1 of the secondary search, the subject of social commerce was found more comprehensively published in Information Systems, ) were reviewed, who were highly cited for their research work on social commerce adoption. The DBLP computer science bibliography is the on-line reference for bibliographic information on major computer science publications. Furthermore, it has evolved from an early small experimental webserver to a popular open-data service for the entire computer science community. The mission of DBLP is to support computer science researchers in their daily efforts by providing free access to high-quality bibliographic meta-data and links to the electronic editions of publications. Step 4: Finally, six published literature reviews in reputable journals and valid conferences during the last decades were selected to ensure the inclusion of all related papers [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] . Then, all references (from 2010 onward) in those literature reviews and papers were sought, which were qualified for consideration and treated with the same three-step selection criteria that were described in Section 3.1.1. 124 International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies Pouti, Taghavifard, Taghva, and Fathian 125 commerce adoption. The third segment encompassed the fundamental theory, and finally, the fourth segment elaborated on the research method, data collection method, data analysis method, data analysis tools, and the sample size. The results including adoption phases, basic theories, social commerce approach, research methods and instruments, business transactions, geography focus, reference types, thematic focus, and the innovation space were extracted based on the evaluation of research works and data synthesis. Database Creation For the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results, a database of 14 entities was used, which was created based on data from a systematic review. These entities included adoption stages, applied theories, research methods, as well as the statistical population of research, research publications, research geography, social commerce approach, business transactions, acceptance factors, value co-creation, customer engagement cycle, research focus, and innovation space. Each entity was created as a table containing the fields of interest based on the type of qualitative and quantitative analysis of a particular entity. The fields of each table were as follows.
doi:10.7903/ijecs.1896 fatcat:6b35izrkdnaxvjse2ksbctmn5y