A Meta-analysis of Social Commerce Adoption Research

Social commerce is a subset of e-commerce that utilises social media to facilitate interaction between sellers and consumers. Over the last number of years, the subject of social commerce has attracted significant attention from many researchers as they attempt to understand the factors affecting its adoption by consumers. A review of results from existing studies suggests inconsistent results for many relationships. Hence, this research has conducted a meta-analysis of 65 studies and synthesized the findings from existing studies in order to estimate the cumulative correlation coefficient (β) and significance (p). The investigation found that behavioural intention, trust, perceived usefulness, and social support are frequently examined dependent variables, that are strongly influenced by a number of independent variables. The findings in this study suggests that perceived usefulness, hedonic value, social commerce constructs, subjective norms, informational and emotional support are important for encouraging social commerce adoption. This research highlights various antecedents that have been theoretically examined in different social commerce studies that explore the effect size through meta-analysis