The role of it affordance and information quality of ewom in stimulating consumers’ purchase intention in live stream shopping

Abstract

The market of social commerce has increased exponentially worldwide. Among various approaches to reach consumers, live streaming has grown significantly as one of the significant ways sellers can generate sales using online platforms. Through live streaming, sellers can demonstrate their products and interact with shoppers through live inquiries. Therefore, the technical capability to support product demonstration and customer interaction is essential in live streaming. As trust is a critical barrier in social commerce, stimulating the intention to purchase products during live streaming is conducive to trust building. Using the social-technical systems perspective, this research investigates the combinative use of IT affordance capabilities and information quality of eWOM as the critical antecedents of trust, affecting purchase intention in the live stream context. The findings are based on quantitative data from 205 Vietnamese online shoppers. The results show the critical role of IT affordance and eWOM in building trust in and promoting consumers’ purchase intention in live-stream shopping on social networking sites. The study highlights the joint effect of technological and social factors in enhancing consumers’ intent to purchase through cultivating trust. While technical aspects are critical to providing product information and improving viewer interaction, platform managers should pay more attention to the development of eWOM to facilitate trust building, which in turn helps to promote consumers’ positive behavior toward their products in live streaming shopping.