Understanding the Role of Affordances in Promoting Social Commerce Engagement

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how different types of affordances (i.e., utilitarian, hedonic, and connective) affect users’ platform and social identity and ultimately boost their social commerce engagement. To test our proposed model, we collected longitudinal data from 228 users of the Little Red Book, China’s leading social commerce platform. Results indicate that users’ perception of different affordances with the social commerce platform can influence their identity with the platform and certain social groups differently, which subsequently affect their social commerce engagement behavior. Our study contributes to the identity and the social commerce literature by exploring the roles of both platform and social identity in shaping users’ engagement behavior in the social commerce context.

KEYWORDS AND PHRASES:

• Online affordances
• online engagement
• online platforms
• platform identity
• social commerce
• social identity

Acknowledgments

This work is supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71801069, 72071190, 71701194), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JZ2021HGTB0072), and the Major Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91846201).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

¹ In Cater and Grover’s [8] work, they use “IT identity,” which we term “platform identity,” to contextualize IT identity in social commerce contexts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiayu Chen

Xiayu Chen is an associate professor in the School of Management at the Hefei University of Technology, China. She received her Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Science and Technology of China and the City University of Hong Kong. Dr. Chen’s research interests include electronic commerce and social media. She has published in such journals as International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Journal of Information Technology, Information Systems Journal, Decision Sciences, Information Technology & People, and Information and Management.

Zhaoyang Liu

Zhaoyang Liu is a student in School of Management at the Hefei University of Technology. Her research focuses on electronic commerce and social media.

Shaobo Wei

Shaobo Wei (Corresponding Author) is a professor in the School of Management at the Hefei University of Technology of China. He received his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Science and Technology of China and the City University of Hong Kong. Dr. Wei’s research focuses on supply chain integration, IT business value creation and social media. He has published papers in such journals as Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Decision Sciences, Journal of Information Technology, and Information and Management.

Yezheng Liu

Yezheng Liu is a professor in the School of Management at the Hefei University of Technology. His research focuses on the electronic commerce and business intelligence. He has published in such journals as Marketing Science, Decision Support Systems, Information Sciences, European Journal of Operational Research, and International Journal of Production Research.