Consumer behavior in social commerce: A literature review

The emergence of social commerce has brought substantial changes to both businesses and consumers. Hence, understanding consumer behavior in the context of social commerce has become critical for companies that aim to better influence consumers and harness the power of their social ties. Given that research on this issue is new and largely fragmented, it will be theoretically important to evaluate what has been studied and derive meaningful insights through a structured review of the literature. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of social commerce studies to explicate how consumers behave on social networking sites. We classify these studies, discuss noteworthy theories, and identify important research methods. More importantly, we draw upon the stimulus–organism–response model and the five-stage consumer decision-making process to propose an integrative framework for understanding consumer behavior in this context. We believe that this framework can provide a useful basis for future social commerce research.