The Impact of User Engagement in Social Commerce: A Conceptual Framework

The development of e-commerce businesses that combine social media features in their platforms makes this business move towards social commerce. Social commerce attracts consumers because it changes the way consumers interact with businesses that influence purchasing decisions. So far, research related to social commerce has mostly discussed user intentions, purchase intentions and user satisfaction, therefore this paper proposes a conceptual framework that links social factors, technological factors with mediating factors on relationship quality and motivation to examine their impact on user engagement. In the framework of this paper, user engagement is operationalized in three dimensions: affective engagement, cognitive engagement, and behavioral engagement. There are two mediating variables, namely relationship quality and motivational factors. In contrast, independent variables such as social factors are operationalized into 3 indicators, namely social support, social interaction, and social presence. In contrast, technological factors are operationalized into 3 indicators, namely information quality, system quality, and service quality. The proposed framework aims to be a guide for empirical research and practical applications that are useful for increasing user engagement participation in social commerce.