Trusted follower model that influence purchase intention in social commerce

Abstract

Social commerce is e-commerce where customers can shop online through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. There are many factors that influence customers to make a purchase through social commerce and one of the factors is follower. The follower is a social commerce user that can communicate with another follower through like, comment, and share another follower’s post. There are many types of follower in social commerce, such as trusted and untrusted follower. The follower can influence a customer’s trust to purchase in social commerce. However, customers usually do not know which follower is the trusted follower. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a trusted follower model for social commerce that can influence purchase intention. In order to achieve this aim, trusted follower factors that can influence purchase intention in social commerce are identified from the literature review. The identified trusted follower factors are self-presentation, self-confidence, social sharing, social interaction, and self-expressive. Based on the identified trusted follower factors, a trusted follower model is developed. In order to evaluate the model, a questionnaire has been developed and distributed to respondents who have the knowledge and experience regarding purchasing in social commerce. Based on the collected data from 33 respondents, SmartPLS software is used to analyze the data. The results show that all trusted follower factors are reliable and significant. In order to prioritize the trusted follower factor, expert’s judgments have been collected and TOPSIS method has been applied. The rank by applying TOPSIS method shows that self-presentation is receiving the highest rank, followed by social sharing, self-confidence, social interaction, and self-expressive. Significant from this study is, customers can recognize and identify the trusted follower of social commerce.