Social commerce : conceptual model and customer perception

The development of the Web 2.0 and Social Media, mainly Social Networks allowed users to create content in the web and influence each other lives and purchasing decisions. In this context, it can be perceived a shift in the traditional “company to consumer” dialogue to a “consumer to consumer” dialogue, giving rise to a new phenomenon called Social Commerce. Despite all the efforts done by researchers to explain Social Commerce, there are still some conceptual differences in its definitions, scopes and boundaries. In this way, this research aims at studying deeply this phenomenon in order to propose a model that defines Social Commerce through the analysis of several existing definitions and their classification into a Framework proposed, highlighting the similarities and differences. In addition, a study about the customer perception was carried out through a survey made in 4 countries. As one of the most relevant outcomes obtained in this research, Social Commerce is explained as all the purchasing decisions resulted, exclusively, from the interaction between one or more consumers. It focuses on social interaction for need creation and/or decision-making, covering both online and in-store purchase. Social Commerce has potential to improve the actual online purchase process and increase customer trust. Although it has been considered a new phenomenon, its idea is not new. Social Commerce is related to the concept of WOM applied to commerce and powered by Social Medias, facilitating the process for spreading information in a larger scale.