SOCIAL NETWORKS, TRUST AND PRICE SENSITIVITY IN E-COMMERCE

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of social networking sites usage on online consumer behavior and the role of trust and price sensitivity. Moreover, the research investigates how the frequency of usage of three different types of e-social networks (namely blogs, forums and social networking sites, such as Facebook) affect “trust in e-commerce”. Until now, the pertinent literature has focused on the relation between “trust” and “online purchase intention”, while studies on the impact of e-social networks on trust examine one type of e-social network at a time. In this paper, using a sample of 1.106 consumers, we have studied “online purchase behavior in terms of money spent and frequency of buys and how the use of three different types of e-social networks affects trust. The results indicate that trust is positively influenced by the frequency of usage of blogs and forums, while consumers who frequently use social networking sites show less trust in e-commerce. As also expected, trust in e-commerce and price sensitivity positively influences money spent and frequency of buys, to an important extent