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Top1. Introduction
Recent developments in web technologies and the emergence of social media concepts and tools have resulted in new developments that affect e-commerce. This development is possible and encouraging. Consumers must be actively involved in buying and selling products and services in online markets and communities (Huang & Benyoucef, 2015). This new phenomenon is often referred to as social commerce (Hajli, 2014), where e-commerce uses social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies. Social commerce has a significant impact on the social interaction between business processes and consumers (Spaulding, 2010). In fact, in this environment, consumers can be exposed to more social and collaborative online shopping experiences to aggregate collective intelligence to better understand purchasing and support more accurate shopping decisions (Dennison et al., 2009). Online merchants can help them to better serve their customers by identifying consumer behavior, preferences and expectations (Constantinides et al., 2008). Unlike traditional e-commerce, which focuses on improving the efficiency of online shopping, social commerce offers a rich social, interactive and collaborative online shopping experience (Yang et al., 2015). In this way, e-commerce moves to a consumer-centered environment aimed at creating new business opportunities (Yang et al., 2015), increasing consumer participation (Guo & Barnes, 2011; Sadovykh et al., 2015), support product and brand development (Huang et al., 2012).
Research on social media and Web 2.0 related to the context of e-commerce (Hajli, 2014) and to their impacts on consumers (Kim & Park, 2013) including their attitudes (Hassanein & Head, 2007), levels of satisfaction (Bai et al., 2008), and shopping behaviors (Seckler et al., 2015) emphasize the importance of designing quality social commerce websites (Hernández et al., 2009). In fact, website design has a significant impact on consumer interaction with social commerce (Cebi, 2013). Consumer purchase intentions, in particular, are heavily influenced by the quality of the social commerce website design (Curty & Zhang, 2013).
The quality of the social commerce website design that creates a memorable and enduring consumption experience has been emphasized (Pine & Gilmore, 1998). Recently, social commerce, combined with information technologies (IT), have reinforced its feature. Today’s new and cutting-edge IT have generally encouraged consumers’ experience and have been required to render far more immersive experience which increases the demand for the goods and service (Pine & Gilmore, 1998). In this situation, social commerce companies around the world have actively developed and provided various information services (IS) that provides consumers with information and joyfulness, and ultimately enhances their experience.
Researchers emphasize that IS should not rely solely on a pleasurable user experience based on deep involvement. Rather, individuals must make a way to find meaningful relationships between their own interests and system use (Nuttavuthist, 2014). Thus, meaningful participation of users in interaction with IS has been presented as a major determinant of continued use of the system (Chen et al., 2015). Nonetheless, the systematic and rigorous approach to developing research structures that reflect meaningful participation is lacking in the IS literature, despite increasing academic and practical interest in meaningful participation. One of the promising prior approaches to conceptualizing meaningful participation is provided by the Aesthetic Experience (AE) Theory. AE was first proposed by Dewey (1934) in the interpretation used here. According to Dewey, AE represents a state of mind in which a person feels a sense of meaning and understands the essence of an experienced event. Thus, this interpretation of AE is different from the use of generic terms in relation to beauty or visual appeal (Cai, 2011). As McCarthy and Wright (2011) and Nardi (2010) explained, AE derives its rationale from the importance of technical involvement.