The development of social commerce intention model SNS among University students

The tendency toward using commerce transactions through social media platforms among Saudi youth made deep investigation of this phenomenon a necessity for many social media users, retailors and decision makers. Understanding the variables that contribute in increasing social media users’ intentions towards social commerce became crucial in this promising innovative market in Saudi context. Nevertheless, due to the lack of studies that clarify the mediating roles of trust, attitude, and satisfaction on the relationships between the Saudis’ social commerce intention and information support, emotional support, and perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived security, and perceived privacy; the Theory of Reasoned Action, Theory of Planned Behaviour and Technology Acceptance Model were used in the present study to develop a conceptual model with 25 hypotheses purposely to investigate these relationships. The study adopted a quantitative approach Data were collected through questionnaires from 538 students studying in five Saudi universities, SPSS version 23 was used in analysing the data and SEM-PLS technique was utilised to test the postulated hypotheses. Out of 25 hypotheses, the results showed that informational support, perceived ease of use and the perceived usefulness have insignificant impact or indirect relationship to trust, while emotional support, perceived security and privacy significantly impact the trust. In addition, trust has a significant effect on attitude and satisfaction. Satisfaction has a significant impact on attitude and social commerce intention and finally, attitude significantly influences social commerce intention. Consequently, the model proved a direct influence of emotional support, perceived security, and perceived privacy on trust which influence directly the satisfaction and attitude; both of these moderating variables have a positive impact on the social commerce intention. This study overture important insights to the social commerce retailers to build campaign strategies based on university students’ perceptions toward social commerce to maximize their intention and engagement in it