Impacts of Social Media Usage in Cross-cultural Social Commerce: the roles of cultural intelligence and cultural distance

In spite of the increasing significance of social commerce, social media usage does not necessarily generate user’s intention to purchase on social commerce websites, particularly in cross-cultural environment marked with cultural dissimilarities and uncertainties. The current research clarifies the mechanism through which social media usage affects individual’s intention to purchase on social commerce websites. The findings demonstrate that two dimensions of social media usage positively increase user’s intention to purchase on social commerce websites via cultural intelligence and cultural intelligence responds as an effective conduit partially mediating the relationship between informational social media usage and user’s purchase intention, whilst fully mediating the relationship between socializing social media usage and user’s intention to purchase. Furthermore, cultural distance plays as a noisy channel to attenuate the positive effects of social media usage on individual’s intention to purchase. The implications and limitations of this research are also discussed