The Impact of Usability, Functionality and Sociability Factors on User Shopping Behavior in Social Commerce Design

The development of social media applications has given rise to a new e-commerce paradigm called social commerce. It attracts users to participate actively in the buying and selling of products in online marketplaces and communities. Within it, users can receive a more social and collaborative online experience, where collective intelligence can be leveraged to help in better understanding of purchase, and in making more accurate decisions [1]. Business organizations can collect users’ behaviors and preferences, which help them to provide more successful online services [2].

Studies of social media applications and Web 2.0 technologies in electronic business (e.g. [3]) and its impact on users’ attitude (e.g. [4]) and their shopping behavior (e.g. [5]) have shown that design of a quality social commerce website is a key aspect of e-business [6]. It has a considerable effect on users’ interaction with social commerce [7]. In particular, users’ shopping behavior is largely determined by whether the design quality can be demonstrated through social commerce websites. This design quality can be greatly achieved by addressing usability, functionality and sociability. It is because that usability has been related with a number of important outcomes, such as ease of use, error reduction and positive attitudes [8], and has been shown to increase users’ intention to purchase behavior [9]. As for functionality, it seems as a paramount factor that users most care about on social commerce design [7]. It appears to have a significant impact on user’s decision and return [10]. Sociability is another major contributor towards social commerce design [11], linking to several critical impact on users engagement, and usage [12]. Hence, usability, functionality and sociability have been considered as the most important factors in social commerce design.

However, it is not clear about the influence of social commerce design to users purchase shopping behavior, which needs to be further explored. It is arguable that such lacks of understanding may cause ineffective social commerce design and hamper users online shopping behavior. Relevant studies indicate that a quality design of social commerce can be greatly achieved by addressing usability, functionality and sociability. However, existing research has not paid enough attention to them. Therefore, this study aims to explore the impact of social commerce design on user shopping decision-making. We believe that the results can provide a useful foundation for future social commerce research.

Social commerce can be categorized as a subset of e-commerce [11]. However, a closer look at social commerce definitions in relevant research indicates that the social commerce concept has many inconsistencies, which may lead to some conceptual confusion. For example, Curty and Zhang [13] defined social commerce as a form of Internet-based social media application which enables companies to deliver commercial activities and services in online communities and marketplaces. However, this definition only looks at sellers to business organizations, lacking of enough attention to users. Huang and Benyoucef [11] explained social commerce as an online mediated application combining Web 2.0 technologies, such as Ajax and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) with interactive platforms, such as social networking sites and content communities in a commercial environment. Nevertheless, such definition limits the viewpoint to computer technology. Michaelidou et al. [14] defined social commerce as a type of social shopping, where users will be influenced by salient information cues from others within a network community when they do shopping online. But, such a definition limits stakeholders to individuals, excluding business organizations. These conceptual inconsistencies in defining social commerce, to some extent, bring a diversity of understandings of what social commerce are. Although there is no wide-ranging accepted definition, prior research identifies two major categories of social commerce. One is e-commerce on social network platforms, for instance Facebook or Twitter based sales platforms; the other is social media applications on e-commerce websites, such as Amazon, Groupon and eBay (these e-commerce websites contain a variety of social media applications).

Social interaction and commercial activities are delivered to users through social commerce websites. In other words, social commerce websites can be seen as a window for users to interact with online business. Regardless of the types of social commerce, democratic values underlying business organizational operations require that social commerce websites should aim for great quality design [15]. A well-designed user website has a significant effect on users shopping behavior [16]. Therefore, it is important to address the design of a quality social commerce website. Several studies have investigated various aspects of design quality on social commerce websites, and these design quality is extensively divided into usability, functionality and sociability factors.

Shopping behavior has been considered as the cognitive process, resulting in the selection of a product, service or a course of purchase action among several alternative possibilities [17]. Some studies conduct the assessment of the shopping processes using a variety of behavior models, frameworks and theories (e.g. [18]); some explores shopping behavior by looking at users’ shopping attitude (e.g. [19]) and shopping expectations (e.g. [20]), others focus on users’ perception of social commerce websites (e.g. [21]) using behavioral theory. For example, Simon [22] addressed decision making in a set of stage, including intelligence, design, choice and implementation. Intelligence refers to problems discovery; design is about solution discovery; choice is to make a choice of the best solution, and implementation is to evaluate the solution. Lai [23] extended shopping behavior to cognitive process, and suggested that shopping decision-making can be structured and ordered in a set of phases, covering intelligence, design and choice. Yadav et al. [24] explained shopping behavior within a social commerce context from a theoretical perspective, addressing that social commerce should consider design on all shopping stages rather than merely online transactions. Therefore, this study will focus on shopping behavior in a set of detailed stages, including product discovery, product evaluation and product purchase. The following sections will detail the importance of each design factor and their relevant influence to each stage of the user’s shopping behavior.

Usability is one of the most important factors of social commerce design [4]. It can be simply defined as capability of the software product to be understood, learned, operated, and attractive to the users [25]. Within a website context, usability refers to the extent to which website can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals to visit with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of website use [8]. Many studies employ multidimensional constructs to explain effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in website usability design. For example, usability reflects perceived simplicity, readability, consistency, learnability, interactivity, navigability, content relevance, supportability, credibility and telepresence [9]. Luna-Nevarez and Hyman [26] described six usability attributes in website design, including content quality, visual and presentation style, navigation, textual information, advertising and social media aids.

A number of usability features have a significant impact on various decision-making stages from literature. For example, Liu et al. [27] studied website attributes in online impulse purchase, and found that information quality, visual appeal and ease of use strongly influence users’ emotion and personality in triggering online impulse shopping decision. Pallud and Straub [28] looked at the effect of store design on user shopping activities, and identified that providing easy start and clear navigation tools can facilitate website orientation and reduce users’ cognitive load, which significantly aids users in products recognition during shopping decision-making. Likewise, Venkatesh et al. [29] found that website aesthetic and minimalist design directly affects user to recognize products. This can be achieved by providing visual appeal, such as consistent layout, corresponding graphics, clear text and hyperlinks [7]. Furthermore, the decision process of information search can be influenced by whether websites provide quality design in aspects of content organization [30], navigation [4], accessibility [31], ease of use [32], and information quality [33]. Gao et al. [34] indicated that user information search outcomes may be determined by information quality in aspects of completeness, usefulness, currency and relevance. Moreover, the usability attributes that influence user products evaluation include content presentation [35], contact information provision [23] and security of transaction [36], because these attributes can build user confidence and overcome perceptions of risk and uncertainty in decision-making [23]. Additionally, determinants that appears to be significant for affecting whether users may finally form shopping behavior in social commerce were empirically validated by offering visual aesthetics [37], well organized content [29], quality information display [38], ease of use [27], security [5] and credibility [9] (see Table 1).

Functionality is a critical factor in social commerce design because it is about the quality of being functional on its websites [39]. It commonly refers to a set of functions and properties that satisfy consumers’ requirements in their task completion, and contains a number of sub design elements, including suitability, accuracy, interoperability and security [40]. Specifically, suitability is about the ability to have the adequate functions for the required tasks; accuracy refers to the ability to provide the right results with the required degree of precision; interoperability is the ability to interact with one or more specified systems, and security is to prevent unauthorized access to services or data. Indeed, social commerce websites are composed of functional (e.g. search function, payment function) or non-functional (e.g. graphics presentation, multimedia, layout) components. Both of the functions and services constitute the basis of user interaction [41]. With higher level of functionality, users can better use social commerce websites, which in turn, achieve greater performance in interacting with information and services [42].

Prior study notes that a good design must provide adequate functional support to meet user requirements at each of their shopping decision. For example, Verhagen and van Dolen [43] described that website functional convenience and representational delight make profound impact on positive and negative shopping intentions, which in turn affect online shopping behavior. Liang and Lai [23] showed that stimulating the desire to purchase in aspects of offering online broadcasting, adding auction mechanism and showing the number of current visitors can be beneficial for products or services awareness. Yang et al. [32] implied that making a high level of search engine capability, customized information and navigation support can promote information search efficiency. Liang and Lai [23] found that functions of price comparison and functions enabling users to assess other users’ comments directly affect consumer evaluation of alternative. More importantly, services of ordering, payment, delivering and login can be seen as the basic functions in social commerce design, which fundamentally support final purchasing [44]. These relevant literature has been summarized in Table 2.

Sociability has been recognized as another paramount contributor towards social commerce design [45]. It provides rich social experience that enables users to connect with their friends, to discover new friends with similar interests, to share product information and to communicate with others during shopping [32]. Sociability design is extensively studied in aspects of participation, conversations and community [46]. For instance, Bilgihan and Bujisic [47] claimed that participation fundamentally supports users in generating, sharing, editing, syndicating and disseminating information. To encourage user participation, a number of design features have been suggested by Bilgihan and Bujisic [47], including user generated content, information sharing, participation intensity, incentives provision and task creation. Conversation relates to establishing relationships among users, essentially assisting them in building peer communities. It can be achieved by developing design features in terms of interaction, communication and connection [48]. Without conversation, there is no multiplication of user generated content and no serious propagation of collective intelligence. While, community is about building networking effects and collaboration provision [49]. Constantinides et al. [2] suggested that communities can be quickly created based on special interest groups or consumers with common interests. It can largely support user collaboration and gather collective intelligence to solve problems and make decisions. Accordingly, social commerce leverage the power of abovementioned social features in a more collaborative and interactive way, encouraging networked communities to socially connect, and providing opportunities for utilizing the web to engage users more effectively [11].

The social aspect of design is seen as a major contributor towards social commerce, which provides users with social value [38]. Such value closely associates with word-of-mouth and user generated content, the core property of social commerce, which largely influences user decision-making process [50]. Hajli [3] argued that providing social support design, such as online social communities is an important part of social value, and positively affect users to recognize products or services provided on social commerce. This production awareness is also evidently achieved by offering other social media applications, such as reviews and rating [10], users’ feedback [51], product sharing [52], and social recommendation [31]. Moreover, Sadovykh [53] explained clear advantages in aspect of information seeking during consumption decisions being made through social support. Count et al. [54] showed that providing virtual communities helps users to leverage social knowledge and experiences to support them in filtering their evaluation and choice, and in making more informed and accurate purchase decisions. Similarly, social features, such as content communities, chats, message boards, referrals, forum and social reviews intensely support user engagement with social commerce, enhancing probability of purchasing [44] (see Table 3).

To understand the effects of social commerce design on user shopping behavior and the underlying mechanism of quality design factors, our research model was developed. To be specific, social commerce design quality considers three key design factors, which are usability, functionality and sociability. User purchase behavior process focuses on three decision-making stages, namely product discovery, product evaluation and product purchase. Based on the literature, we believe that each quality design factor has a positively influence to each step of user shopping decision making. Accordingly, these are indicated in the model as shown in Fig. 1.

Research model

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The contributions of this study consist of exploring the impact of social commerce design on user decision-making behavior in a framework aimed at supporting social commerce researchers and developers. Our research model is developed. This confirms the explanatory power of our research model over shopping behavior process, which provides us with deep insights into the relationship between social commerce design and user shopping behavior. In fact, all social commerce design quality factors, including usability, functionality and sociability have the significant influences to user shopping behavior, namely product discovery, product evaluation and product purchase. Such results may evidently confirm the importance of these quality factors to social commerce design as well as to user shopping behavior. It benefits for understanding the core user shopping behavior in social commerce websites. Moreover, the relevant sub-element within each quality design factor provides deep insight into social commerce design, helping business organizations to develop social commerce to meet their desirable business goals. However, this study is just the first step of our research. A future empirical study will be conducted to investigate the effects of social commerce design on user shopping behavior, and identify certain design features that are more important than other on various shopping decision-making stages.