دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی توسعه تجارت اجتماعی در بازارهای نوظهور - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

This study explores the development of a new form of social commerce in emerging markets from three interlocking aspects, namely, social (trust and familiarity), technical (governing form factor and technological utility), and socio-technical (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and word of mouth). As social commerce is proliferating and evolving across many emerging markets, we explore how these above-stated constructs manifest themselves in these markets. Our findings show the importance of governing form factors such as mobile system in the development of social commerce in emerging markets. Furthermore, familiarity and trust play a major role in mediating exchange between sellers and buyers and its positive effective in buyers’ perceived usefulness of each social commerce platform. Finally, Word of Mouth plays a vital role in building trust and helps in increasing buyer propensity and intention to search for products on these social commerce platforms.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The development of Internet-mediated services in the form of e-commerce in emerging markets has been proposed as one of the main Internet-mediated services that could further the development of a given state economy (Humphrey et al. 2003). Research on the barriers to e-commerce in these emerging markets has shown that lack of telecommunication infrastructure, high access cost and access to computer equipment are major technological barriers to the development of e-commerce in emerging markets (Lawrence et al. 2010). Hence, issues such as Internet based infrastructure both in technical form such as fibre optics and software form such as public key infrastructure and digital signature hinder the develop of these system within a given state (Lawrence et al. 2010). Nonetheless, recent research conducted in the area of Internet access has shown that mobile phones are playing a major role in providing Internet access to the developing world (Gibreel et al. 2013), which in turn leads to usage of the click-brick model and strategy. Examples of this type of click-brick model are m-Pesa in Kenya and Talabat in Kuwait. Instagram enabled social commerce in Kuwait follows the same click-brick model approach. This model leapfrogs the infrastructure barriers and software barriers faced by e-commerce using the mobile system and click-and-brick strategy, which supports our hypothesis that form factor in the form of mobile phone using mobile system is positively related to perceived ease of use to buy products online. On the other hand, consumer rights policies that are found in well-established e-commerce sites such as Amazon’s "you can return anything, at any time, for any reason" (Warrington et al. 2000) are not available in these types of social commerce that are based on Instagram. Hence, our research has explored the trust factors related to Instagram sellers from the buyer’s perspective. The results supported the idea that trust in the sellers plays a role in a buyer’s intention to buy, reducing risk derived from not being able to return the product after the time of purchase.