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Top1. Introduction
Today’s business environment has become dynamic due to the rapidly changing nature of our competitively digitalized world characterized by social media and electronic commerce (e-commerce). As a result of this dynamism, businesses that can change and adapt have a higher propensity to thrive (Rahayu & Day, 2015). Social media consists of Internet-based applications that rely on the idea and technological foundations of Web 2.0 which enables the creation and exchange of user-generated content (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). E-commerce, on the other hand, has been referred to as the buying and selling of goods services, and information over the Internet and the World Wide Web (Kroenke, 2011). E-commerce has brought sellers closer to their customers and thus, varied market dynamics and features. Both social media and e-commerce have been known to complement each other. For instance, social media may be used to support, improve, or complement traditional and online marketing activities as well as gather market intelligence through e-commerce by developing, marketing, and distributing products, communicating with customers, and also improving customer retention and relations (Abed, Dwivedi, & Williams, 2015). Through this complementarity, social media has enabled businesses to reach a large number of customers around the globe irrespective of their size through social media advertising and building of relationships (Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). All these are achievable through social commerce. Social commerce is the use of web 2.0 and social media technologies and infrastructure to create new business models for electronic commerce and support online interactions and user contributions to assist in the acquisition of products and services (Abed, Dwivedi, & Williams, 2015). Marketing strategies adopted through social commerce engage individuals who shop online through graphics, promotions, and personalized purchase choices. It is therefore not surprising that a lot of companies especially in the United States (US) were reported in 2018 to have adopted Facebook and Instagram for marketing purposes (Statista, 2019a). These supports the increasing number of businesses and consumers that engage in social commerce as a form of commerce mediated by social media (Grange, Benbasat, & Burton-Jones, 2020). Given these, Shen and Eder (2011) consider social commerce as the “technology-enabled shopping experiences where online consumer interactions while shopping provide the main mechanisms for conducting social shopping activities” (p. 20).