Understanding Consumers’ Switching Intention from e-Commerce to Social Commerce: A Mixed Methods Study

Abstract

As firms continue to use social media checkout and shopping integrations, and social media platforms become primary search engines for consumers, social commerce is slowly replacing traditional e-commerce. However, there is still a limited understanding of why consumers frequently switch between e-commerce and social commerce platforms during the process by which they discover and purchase a product. This study attempts to bridge this gap by investigating the switching behavior from traditional e-commerce to social commerce at the consumer level. By following a mixed-methods approach, this study develops and empirically validates a research model derived using the push–pull–mooring framework and the findings of the exploratory study. The test results showed that the proposed research model explains a large portion (0.607%) of the variance in consumers’ switching intentions. Besides, social influence was also found to moderate the impact of push and pull factors on switching intention.