Understanding social commerce: A systematic literature review and directions for further research

International Journal of Information Management 36 (2016) 1075–1088

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International Journal of Information Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijinfomgt

Review

Understanding social commerce: A systematic literature review and directions for further research Abdelsalam H. Busalim ∗ , Ab Razak Che Hussin Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computing, Univsersiti Teknologi, Malaysia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 7 February 2016 Received in revised form 4 June 2016 Accepted 10 June 2016 Keywords: Social commerce Electronic commerce Web 2.0 Social media Systematic review

a b s t r a c t Web 2.0 technologies and social media gave a rise to social commerce as a new phenomenon in the business world. Recently, social commerce gained a major attention from both academics and practitioners. Numerous studies have been conducted to understand s-commerce and examine its impact. Since 2010 the published studies on s-commerce increased, but little attempt has been made to incorporate the findings of former surveys and assess the current state of the research in this field. In this study, we conducted a systematic review of s-commerce research, to explore the term s-commerce by collecting, reviewing and synthesizing studies that related to s-commerce published from 2010 to 2015. By following review protocol which integrated two stages (automatic and manual) to cover all studies in this period, we identified 110 studies which address s-commerce. The results show that the studies that addressing s-commerce increased during the last 6 years. We observed that the current studies covered numerous research themes under s-commerce, such as user behavior, business models, s-commerce website design, adoption strategy, social process network analysis and firm performance. Most of these studies focus on user behavior and website design, while other themes gained little attention; therefore, this study highlights direction for further research. This review reveals s-commerce to be a promising new area of research, showing a new paradigm of conducting commerce using social media to reach customers and their networked friends. Discussion of this and conclusion have been highlighted. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents 1. 2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1076 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1076 2.1. Social commerce definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1076 2.2. Historical development of social commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1077 Review method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1077 3.1. Review protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1077 3.2. Inclusion and exclusion criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1078 3.3. Search strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079 3.4. Study selection process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079 3.5. Quality assessment (QA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079 Data extraction and synthesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1079 4.1. Publication sources overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1080 4.2. Temporal view of publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1080 4.3. Research methodologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1080 4.4. Theoretical foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1080 Research questions results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1081 Discussion and conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1086

∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.H. Busalim). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2016.06.005 0268-4012/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1086 Appendix A. Supplementary data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1087 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1087

1. Introduction The emerging of web 2.0 technologies and social media has changed the way how people communicate, collaborate, and live, as well as how business is conducted. The characteristics of web 2.0 unleash the opportunities to create a new business model that includes several social aspects to attract customers. Because social networking sites (SNSs) have become more popular, they have forged connections among internet users and become an important source of information for users (Wang & Chang, 2013). SNSs are considered significant for both individuals and businesses because they support the maintenance of existing social ties and the establishment of new connections between users (Constantinides & Lorenzo-Romero, 2013). Nowadays, the evolution of e-commerce in the digital economy has led to social commerce (s-commerce) as a new paradigm. S-commerce generally refers to online commerce applications that harness social media and Web 2.0 technologies (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013b). Three main concepts joined to form the social commerce phenomenon: Web 2.0 technologies, social media and e-commerce (Lai, 2010). E-commerce firms now engage their consumers in social media websites in order to get valuable feedback on products and services (Hajli, 2014c). S-commerce is a paradigm shift in ways of doing business and opens up a new field for information systems research (Saundage & Lee, 2011; Shanmugam, Sun, Amidi, Khani, & Khani, 2016) The notion behind s-commerce is that social media benefits commercial transactions of vendors by developing closer relationships with customers, enriching the quality of the relationship, increasing sales and encouraging loyalty to the business (Hajli, 2014b). The evolution of e-commerce into s-commerce has changed the role of the customer as well. The emergence of scommerce reflects the collective bargaining power of end-users as the Internet has moved the bargaining power from sellers to customers (Kim, 2012; Hajli & Sims, 2015; Huang & Benyoucef, 2013a). Customers become the central focus for the firms. S-commerce environment has shifted e-commerce from product-oriented platform to customer-oriented environment (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013a; Wigand, Benjamin, & Birkland, 2008). Businesses are actively exploring the potentials of such technologies for doing commerce (Anderson, 2015). For example, Amazon and eBay are the global pioneers of e-commerce (Hajli, 2013). Today these exemplars of online shopping are changing their market position with social networking websites like Facebook. Amazon has designed a formalized and structured form of social customer relationship management that allows individuals to communicate with groups of people with a shared business interest (Amblee & Bui, 2011). Liu, Cheung, and Lee (2016) stated that s-commerce sites are growing at amazing rates. For example, s-commerce sites such as Groupon and Living Social have become emerging properties, valued at more than $3 billion, and it is anticipated that IT business will invest almost $50 billion annually in s-commerce by 2020 (Kim, Sun, & Kim, 2013). S-commerce research is still in early stages of development, although the concept of s-commerce has been increasingly used and has received interest in several studies since 2010 (Wang & Zhang, 2012). However, understanding of s-commerce is scattered and limited (Wang & Zhang, 2012). The information systems community and practitioners need a deeper understanding of the scommerce phenomenon because s-commerce is an emerging field of study with a little empirical evidence, and businesses need to

understand the appropriateness of various social media services for business (Saundage & Lee, 2011). Moreover, there has been no effort to systematically review and synthesise these studies, in order to provide a clear view of s-commerce for academics and practitioners. Therefore, this study uses a systematic review approach to explore the s-commerce concept. It systematically collects, analyses and synthesises all the current studies on s-commerce and provides the state of research in this domain using a mind map on s-commerce research themes, methodologies, s-commerce activities and theories. To achieve the main objective of this study, we propose five key questions. Answering these questions can help the reader understand s-commerce, and explain the characteristics and activities of s-commerce that distinguish it from the traditional e-commerce and detail what topics have been addressed in the literature. The research questions of this study are stated below: RQ1. What are the differences between e-commerce and scommerce? RQ2. What are the characteristics of s-commerce? RQ3. What are the activities of s-commerce? RQ4. What are the research themes that are addressed in scommerce studies? RQ5. What are the limitations and gaps in current research of s-commerce? Overall, the contribution of this study is twofold. First, through the analysis of 110 studies, this review provides the readers with a comprehensive understanding of s-commerce domain, and also provides a mind map of the s-commerce themes for researchers who want to recognize the topic areas where more research is needed. Second, for practitioners, this review brings them up to date on the s-commerce activities and the current state of scommerce design and implementation. The remainder of this study is organized as follows: Section 2 provides the background of scommerce and its historical development; Section 3 explains the research method used to conduct this review; Section 4 reveals the SLR results; Section 5 reports the research questions results; and finally, Section 6 presents the discussion and conclusion. 2. Background This section provides an overview of s-commerce, highlights the historical development of s-commerce, and summarises the core definitions. 2.1. Social commerce definition Social commerce, also known as social business has no specific definition because it has different meanings (Liang & Turban, 2011). Generally, social commerce is defined as the use of Internet based media to enable users to participate in the selling, buying, comparing, and sharing of information about products and services in online marketplace and communities (Zhou, Zhang, & Zimmermann, 2013). Some have defined social commerce as an evolution of Web 2.0 of online commerce (Sturiale & Scuderi, 2013), allowing a greater interactivity and participation of and among customers by means of blogs, wiki systems and sharing of articles written by the very community members. On the other hand, s-commerce is considered as a subset of traditional e-commerce. Liang & Turban (2011) and Sharma and Crossler (2014) define scommerce as a subset of e-commerce that involves using social networks to support social interaction for the online buying and

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Table 1 Some s-commerce definitions from previous studies. No.

Definition

Reference

1

The activities by which people shop or intentionally explore shopping opportunities by participating and/or engaging in a collaborative online environment The delivery of e-commerce activities and transactions via the social media environment, mostly in social networks and by using Web 2.0 software. Social commerce is a subset of electronic commerce that uses social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to enhance the online purchase experience.” Social commerce is a form of commerce mediated by social media involving convergence between the online and offline environments The use of Internet-based media that allow people to participate in the marketing, selling, comparing, curating, buying, and sharing of products and services in both online and offline marketplaces, and in communities Social commerce is the use of social networking in the context of electronic commerce or even mobile commerce. A new stream in e-commerce, which encourages the social interaction of consumers through social media A multi-user-based e-commerce that involves multiple people during an e-commerce transaction. Technology-enabled shopping experiences where online consumer interactions while shopping provide the main mechanism for conducting social shopping activities Social commerce and social shopping are forms of Internet-based “social media” that allow people to participate actively in the marketing and selling of products and services in online marketplaces and communities Social commerce defined as word of-mouth applied to e-commerce Social commerce is a special kind of e-commerce that allows the interaction between merchants and consumers in a social environment such as Facebook, Doing commerce in a collaborative and participative way by using social media through an enterprise interactive interface. S-commerce refers to the conduct of e-commerce activities using social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) to aid in encouraging online purchases

(Curty & Zhang, 2011)

2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14

selling of products and services. IBM defines s-commerce as a wordof-mouth concept which has been applied to e-commerce, in that it is a combination of retailer’s products and interaction of online customers (Dennison, Bourdage-Braun, & Chetuparambil, 2009). A more detailed and practical definition (Yadav, de Valck, Hennig-Thurau, Hoffman, & Spann, 2013) refers to s-commerce as exchange-related activities that take place between and are influenced by social network users in computer mediated social environments, where the activities correspond to the need recognition, pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase stages of a focal exchange (Yadav et al., 2013). The author also argues that both customers’ and companies’ activities are comprised in the scommerce domain; therefore, customers engage before, during and after transaction processes, combine-with campiness’ initiatives to facilitate those activities. The increasing growth of s-commerce business increase, (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013a) highlighted some reports which indicate that the growing popularity of social commerce reaches round 43% per year. 88% of companies expect to expand their investment on social commerce in the near future. The table below shows different definitions of social commerce as it was reviewed by previous scholarly work (Table 1). 2.2. Historical development of social commerce The roots of the s-commerce concept are traced to the late 1990s (Curty & Zhang, 2011), when the two pioneer e-commerce companies, Amazon and eBay, have introduced features that enable customers to write reviews on products or rate the seller’s performance (Friedrich, 2015). In 2005, Yahoo introduced the term “social commerce” to describe a new collaborative shopping feature on its shopping platform that allowed consumers to create, share and comment on product lists (Wang & Zhang, 2012). With the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media, e-commerce companies began to integrate new technologies into their websites to provide consumers with a more social and interactive shopping experience (Curty & Zhang, 2011; Friedrich, 2015). The popularity of social media technologies allowed the customers to increasingly engage in online social communities and actively share their experiences

(Liang & Turban, 2011) (Kim, 2013) (Wang & Zhang, 2012) (Zhou et al., 2013)

(Dar & Shah, 2013) (Hajli, 2013) (Yamakami, 2014) (Shen & Eder, 2011) (Stephen & Toubia, 2010)

(Wu, Shen, & Chang, 2015) (Sturiale & Scuderi, 2013) (Baghdadi, 2013) (Smith, Zhao, & Alexander, 2013)

with and opinions on products and brands with other customers and friends (Cheung, Xiao, & Liu, 2014). The first academic articles stated the term “social commerce” was in 2007. Practically, the first formal lunch of s-commerce was in 2009 when flowers.com opened the first Facebook store (Bansal, Green, & Chen, 2011; Stuth & Mancuso, 2010). 3. Review method To answer the above questions, this study uses a systematic review approach (Hanafizadeh, Keating, & Khedmatgozar, 2014). An effective review can create a firm foundation for advancing knowledge, facilitate theory development and discover areas where research is needed (Webster & Watson, 2002). Systematic review can be defined as a process of identifying, evaluating, and interpreting all available research relevant to research questions, area of study, or rising phenomenon of interest (Kitchenham & Charters, 2007). The reasons for conducting a systematic review are to summarize the evidence about a technology or treatment, to summarize the evidence of the advantages of a specific method, to identify any research gaps in the existing research in order to suggest for further investigation, and to provide deep understanding for new phenomenon (Kitchenham & Charters, 2007). Therefore, these reasons fit with the aim of our review. This study follows Kitchenham and Charters guidelines. According to Kitchenham and Charters (2007) a systematic review task involves three main stages: planning the review, conducting the review and reporting the review. Every stage has certain activities, these activities are: (1) identify research questions, (2) develop review protocol, (3) identify the inclusion and exclusion, (4) search strategy and study selection process (5) perform quality assessment process, and (6) data extraction and synthesis. The details of each activity will be described below 3.1. Review protocol Review protocol is an essential stage in performing systematic review, and specifies the methods that will be used to

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Fig. 1. Review protocol.

undertake a systematic review. The goal of review protocol is to reduce research bias (Kitchenham, 2004). The review protocol contains: background, research questions, Search strategy, study selection process, quality assessment, data extraction, and synthesis of the extracted data (Kitchenham & Charters, 2007). In this review, the research questions and background of s-commerce are stated above. Fig. 1 illustrates the review protocol for this study.

Table 2 Inclusion and exclusion Criteria. Inclusion Criteria

Exclusion Criteria

Full-text Published within selected period of time (2010–2015) Published in the above selected database Study manuscript written in English. In the domain of e-commerce or s-commerce

Uncompleted studies Non English Outside the selected time Duplicated studies

3.2. Inclusion and exclusion criteria The purpose of identifying inclusion and exclusion criteria is to make sure the selected studies are relevant and related to our study. Since this review focuses on understanding the social commerce, the consideration is only on the articles from journals, conferences, workshops, book chapters and symposia in the English language. The duration of the selected studies is from 2010 to 2015. The reasons for choosing this period of time are twofold. First this review is a complement of previous efforts (Shanmugam & Jusoh,

2014; Wang & Zhang, 2012) to provide a deep understanding of s-commerce. Second, the term s-commerce has been increasingly used in several studies since 2010, and the last major articles reviewing the state of s-commerce research covers literature until this year, therefore this year is required in an effort to systematically collect, analyses and synthesise these studies for last six years. Table 2 shows the criteria for this review.

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Fig. 2. Distribution of studies after QA.

3.3. Search strategy The search strategy, as depicted in Fig. 1, consists of two stages: automatic stage and manual stage. The automatic stage is to identify the primary studies of s-commerce. Based on Webster and Watson (2002) recommendations, the researcher did not limit the search process to a specific set of journals; instead, several online databases were used in order to cover a broad range of academic publication. The online database were used are: ScienceDirect, Scopus, Springer, IEEE Explorer, ACM Digital Library, Engineering Village, ISI Web of Knowledge, AIS e-Library and Thomas Reuters Web of science. These databases are considered relevant and provide high impact factor publication. In order to perform the automatic search, keywords were identified based on the research question of this review. The main keywords used are: “social commerce”; “social e-commerce”; and “social electronic commerce”. The second stage is manual search. Backward; forward search method (Levy & Ellis, 2006; Webster & Watson, 2002) were used to trace the citation of the selected studies. We used Google Scholar search engine to go forward and find the studies which were cited in the selected primary studies. Manual stage was used to ensure that the systematic research is comprehensive and relatively complete (Webster & Watson, 2002). For managing and sorting all the studies; Mendely; a reference management tool; was used; in order to keep all the search results and easily remove the duplicated studies. 3.4. Study selection process Following the search strategy is study selection process. The study selection process is to identify the studies that are related to the research questions of this review. Using the defined keywords, the result of the initial search identified (225) studies from the automatic search. After removing the duplicated studies using Mendeley, (207) remained. Then, we apply the inclusion/exclusion criteria, on the Abstract and conclusion of each study. In this step (86) total studies were eliminated based on abstract and conclusion. Based on Kitchenham and Charters recommendation (Kitchenham & Charters, 2007), in this step, we excluded the studies that were clearly not related to the subject of this review. Full-text scanning was used for the rest of the remaining studies with the consideration of the exclusion criteria. In this step we applied the manual search at the reference of each study, in order to trace any missing studies. After applying the manual search, an additional (12)

studies were found. Thus, the final set of the primary studies was (133). Finally, we applied quality assessment criteria, and (23) were removed while a total of (110) studies were identified as a final list of primary studies as tabulated in Appendix A in Supplementary material. 3.5. Quality assessment (QA) Applying quality assessment is considered critical to assessing the quality of the primary studies (Kitchenham & Charters, 2007). The details of quality assessment are based on quality instruments. These instruments cloud be, check list of factors or questions that need to be applied for each study (Bandara, Miskon, & Fielt, 2011; Kitchenham & Charters, 2007). However, in this review we develop four quality assessment criteria in order to assess the quality of each study. These criteria are detailed below: QA1. Is the topic addressed in the paper related to s-commerce? QA2. Is the research methodology described in the paper? QA3. Is the data collection method described in the paper? QA4. Are the data analysis steps clearly described in the paper? The four QA Criteria presented above were applied to the 131 primary studies in order to enrich our confidence in the credibility of the selected studies. The process of applying quality assessment used three levels of quality schema (high, medium, low) (Nidhra, Yanamadala, Afzal, & Torkar, 2012), and the quality of each study depends on the loading score. For instance, studies that fulfill the criterion will be given 2; studies that partially fulfill the criterion will be given 1; studies that do not fulfill the criterion will be given 0. Studies that score 5 or above, will be considered high, while if they score 4 they will be considered medium, and if its below 4, considered low. After applying the QA, 23 studies were eliminated because they did not fulfill the QA criteria. The results of QA are displayed in Fig. 2, and the list of QA of each study presented in Appendix B in Supplementary material. 4. Data extraction and synthesis In this stage, we designed a data extraction form in order to record all the information accurately. This process was performed by reading each study carefully, and extracting the related data using Mendely and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. We adopted the research framework proposed by Liang and Turban (2011). The framework was introduced to integrate several elements in

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Table 3 Data extraction of primary studies. Extracted data

Description

Study ID Authors Study Title Publication Date Source Research Theme Outcome Measures Theory Methodology Data Collection Method

Unique identity for the paper Names of all the authors The name of the paper which appear in the searching stage The year of publishing the paper (2010–2015) E.g. conference proceeding, journal, book chapter Description of the study domain, e.g. user behavior, network analysis, adoption strategy The topic addressed in the paper, e.g. trust, design features, etc. Theory the paper adopted, e.g. social support, motivation, etc. Quantitative, qualitative or mixed method E.g. survey, case study, experiment, observation etc.

35 30

31

30 25 19

20 14

15

12

10

Fig. 3. Distribution of studies based on source of publication.

5

4

0

s-commerce research. It includes six key elements: (research theme, theories, research methods, commercial activities, social activities and outcome measures). However, in this review, the following columns were considered for data extraction: study ID, authors, study title, date of publication, source, research theme, topic addressed, theory, methodology, and research method. These items were selected in alignment with the objective and research questions of this review. The description of each item is shown in Table 3.

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Fig. 4. Temporal view of primary studies.

As depicted in Fig. 3, because majority of the studies were published in reliable and impact factor journals as well as leading conference on information systems, the importance of this review increases. Primary studies were used to ensure high quality and to provide accurate information on s-commerce phenomenon. The majority distribution of publication sources were journals with (66) studies, followed by (38) conferences studies, and finally the rest of the studies were published in workshops, book chapters and Symposiums, with (2) studies for each source.

growing use of online communities that empowered users, and the issues related to the adoption and use of social commerce as new form of e-ecommerce. In 2011, as social commerce continued to develop, the trend of the year was the technical dimension of social commerce websites, technological features and the tools that illustrate the s-commerce evolution and its future potential. The discussion on the acceptance of s-commerce by the customers and the adoptions issues continued in this year as well (Fig. 5). In 2012 and 2013, most of the research focused on user behavior toward social commerce. Studies tackled issues such as buying intention, purchasing behavior, shopping experiences and repurchasing intention. The development extended in 2014 to examine the impact of s-commerce activities such as eWOM and value cocreation on different online market; for instance, tourism, and grocery. In 2015 social commerce studies expanded to include the risk and security issues, trust and investigate how the customer continuously participate in s-commerce activities.

4.2. Temporal view of publication

4.3. Research methodologies

The period of time selected for this review as mentioned in Section 2.2 is (2010–2015). The distribution of the studies through the years is shown in Fig. 4. As can be seen in the graph, the publications of s-commerce studies have gradually increased from 2010 to 2014. The highest number of publication was recorded in 2014 with 31 studies. In 2015, the number of studies published was 19 studies. This distribution shows how the number of the s-commerce studies increased by years. To visualize the development of s-commerce studies, Fig. 5 shows the key topics discussed throughout the timeline. In the first year (2010), social commerce studies revolved around on two main topics: first, the economic value implication of social commerce and the concern of the users beyond their need for having fun (Stephen & Toubia, 2010); and second, the importance of the

The Research methods that have been adopted in the primary studies are presented in Fig. 4. As can be seen, the majority of the studies used quantitative methodology, and most of these studies were survey based. The figure demonstrates that 80% of the studies were quantitative, while seven studies qualitative, and five studies were reviews. The distributions show only one study was both quantitative and qualitative, two were conceptual studies and the remaining seven studies were unclear (Fig. 6).

4.1. Publication sources overview

4.4. Theoretical foundations Classification of theories are based on the primary goals of each theory. According to Gregor (2006) there are four primary goals of theory which are: Analysis and Description, Explanation, Prediction

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Fig. 5. S-commerce studies evolution.

Fig. 6. Distribution of research methodologies.

and Prescription. Combination these goals lead to five categories theories: Analysis, Explanation, Prediction, Explanation and prediction (EP) and Design and action. The results shows that most of the s-commerce studies used theories under the (EP) category as a foundation for their research, because EP theory provides both testable propositions and causal explanations. According to the systematic review results, we found that social support theory (SST) and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) are the most

commonly used theories. As shown in Fig. 7, TAM and SST have the highest number of papers, with eight and seven papers, respectively. Following that, Theory of Reasoned Action was used in four papers. Theory of planned behavior, Uses and Gratification and Trust Transfer Theory have gained attention and been applied in three studies each. It is notable that most of the theories used in s-commerce studies are social-related theories, which indicates the important role of social aspect brought by the social nature of s-commerce, related to customers and the impact of social interactions on purchasing intention or decision making process in s-commerce. Moreover, behavioral theories such as Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Theory of planned behavior (TPB) and theory of reasoned action (TRA) were applied in a number of studies. Such theories have been widely tested in IS field for understand the adoption of information technology (Zhang & Benyoucef, 2016). Therefore there were studies attempted to empirically examine the applicability of these theories on s-commerce context. 5. Research questions results RQ1. What are the differences between e-commerce and scommerce? Despite the definition stated by some studies that consider social commerce as a subset of e-commerce, which involves utilizing social media to assist e-commerce transaction process and activities (Liang & Turban, 2011), there are some differences

Fig. 7. Distribution of theories and models.

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between the two business models. Huang and Benyoucef (2013a) and Sigala (2015) in their studies, they differentiated between ecommerce and social commerce in three different aspects: social interaction, business goals and customer connection. In social connection, e-commerce enabled by web 1.0 provides a classical way (one-to-way) of browsing (Afrasiabi Rad & Benyoucef, 2011) where information and feedback from the customer is rarely sent back to the seller or other customer; however, social commerce provides a more social and interactive environment to allow customers to share their information with other friends and customers. With regard to business goals, e-commerce focuses on increasing the efficiency of strategies for quick search, one-click buying and recommendations based on customer preferences. On the other hand, social commerce focus on social goals; for example, networking, collaboration and information sharing (Wang & Zhang, 2012). However, social interaction and social goals symbolize the social aspect that brought by s-commerce which makes the main difference between the two terms. Recent empirical study emphasized that social interaction in form of Word of Mouth (WOM) is a prerequisite successful element for s-commerce (Wang & Yu, 2015). Regarding customer connections, one major difference between e- commerce and social commerce is that, in e-commerce, the customer is usually perceived as isolated, disconnected from his community, and conducting an individual act with no connection with others, while in s-commerce, he is perceived as interaction of a community of users and potential users (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013b). For example, social commerce focuses on SNSs on sharing reviews about products or services. The product reviews are communicated in the form of comments from friends on one of social media platforms, e.g., Facebook. This social information, which is embedded in views, is considered a key in s-commerce (Bai, Yao, Cong, & Zhang, 2015). Customers in social commerce can naturally play the role of sellers through continued communication with the sellers. For instance in group buying, customers can conduct promotion activities to their friends, in order to reach a certain amount of sales volume, which can benefit them by giving them a large discount (Jang, Ko, & Kim, 2013). Moreover, group buying sites encourage customers to do virtual marketing and introduce products and services to their friends by utilizing SNSs and getting rewards when the purchasing is successfully made. S-commerce offers value offerings which lead to customer marketing activities for active participation (Hwang, Lee, & Kim, 2014). Bansal et al. (2011) points out that, s-commerce is about utilizing the social media to build a personal relationship by creating a sense of shared values and community between products and markets. Therefore, s-commerce is a classic collaborative commerce (Dong & Li, 2013). Baghdadi (2013) Providing other aspects to distinguish between the two terms, the study summarises the main differences between e-commerce and social commerce as shown in the Table 4. Continuing the study of differences, social commerce has more web 2.0 features than traditional e-commerce. It includes further interactions among customers than in e-commerce and has gratification factors included in social networking sites (Crossler, 2014). These distinctive features support the social aspect of an online shopping experience (Lai, 2010; Shen & Eder, 2011). Liang, Ho, Li, and Turban (2011) highlight that, web 2.0 technologies are the main differences between social commerce and e-commerce. It is argued that the development of social commerce is related to the rapid growth of social network sites (Liang & Turban, 2011). Baghdadi (2013) highlighted three main technologies that enable social commerce: Web 2.0, social media and cloud computing. The study shows how social commerce extends commerce and e-commerce by utilizing Web 2.0 and social media to generate content and share it. In summary, s-commerce represents the transformation of online business, which brought about by Web2.0 and social

computing tools, which both represent the social aspect of scommerce. Sociability of s-commerce is a key technological features of s-commerce that enable social relationship among customers (Zhang, Lu, Gupta, & Zhao, 2014). In social competing era, the interaction includes both computer actions and social behavior. The emergence of social computing has empowered online customers by providing tools and platforms for them to produce and share information with friends or communities. Zhang et al. (2014) demonstrates that sociability of s-commerce environment facilitates customer to customer interaction by allow social affordances supported by social media technologies. However, this new way of online social content generation has introduced s-commerce as new form of e-commerce which mainly relying on social aspect, and on a set of tools, infrastructure, marketplace, support theories, all of which socially oriented. RQ2. What are the Characteristics of s-commerce? The new advancement of Web 2.0, has transformed the internet into a social environment by introducing social media, where individuals can interact and generate content online (Hajli, 2014a). Social commerce is a new way of conducting commerce by utilizing Web 2.0 technologies. Using Web 2.0 has changed the way users and enterprises interact and collaborate (Jiang, Ma, Shang, & Chau, 2014). Although previous studies have defined s-commerce as a subset of e-commerce, it has unique characteristics (Kim & Park, 2012). These characteristics have changed the role of customers to be more active and co-create value (Liang & Turban, 2011; Management, Raymond, & Hajli, 2014). Based on our review, there are four main characteristics that give s-commerce its uniqueness and distinguished it from traditional e-commerce: Interactivity, collaboration, community and social aspect. • Interactivity Interactive technologies have changed not only the structure of business but also how firms and customers interrelate in the marketplace (Blasco-Arcas, Hernandez-Ortega, & Jimenez-Martinez, 2013). The increasingly growing implementation of these interactive technologies is generally based on the evolution of the internet that has encouraged meaningful relationships in e-commerce and modified the role of customers (Blasco-Arcas et al., 2013). Scommerce is filled with social interaction (Jiang et al., 2014). Social interactions are recognized as the unique characteristics of social commerce, and they can be built both between companies and customers, and among customers (Curty & Zhang, 2011). These interconnectivities among customers via social media allow customers to have access to information provided through social interaction (Hajli & Sims, 2015). Consumer social interaction via social media platforms has become an important part of social commerce (Hajli, 2014c). Although there are many forms of social interaction, the most commonly adopted form is online ratings and reviews (Amblee & Bui, 2011). (Hajli & Sims, 2015) Propose social commerce constructs which can be used with social tools to perform social interaction among customers. These constructs are: online forum, communities, rating, reviews and recommendations (Hajli, 2013). Customers can search for other customers’ reviews and comments before purchasing a product or service. This leads to a better and informed decision (Ling & Husain, 2013). Social interaction also helps companies to receive valuable feedback from their target customers in their quest to successfully develop new products and services. For example Facebook provides fan pages for companies to build direct and interactive communication with fans (Wang, 2013). In addition, social connections provide great opportunities for companies to encourage customers’ positive e-WOM (Anderson, 2015; Hajli, 2014c).

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Table 4 Main differences between social and e-commerce (Baghdadi, 2013). Aspect

e-commerce

Social commerce

Business model

• Traditional • R&D • Product/services/Business Process-oriented

• Need new business models or build on the existing ones more technology enabled (Web 2.0, cloud computing and SOA) • Co-design • Social and customer-oriented

Value creation

The design of the business process, products or services is limited to the enterprise (or its partners)

• Participatory and collaborative • Create revenue using scarcity of attention • Seeking new business values

Value chain Customer connection/communication conversation

Limited actors • Customer interact individually with e-commerce websites and independently from other customers. • No communication from customer to business or from customer to customer

Large actors, where motivation of participating is rewarded • Involves online communities that support social connection to enhance conversation between customers • Collaboration and participation

Systems Interaction

• One-way browsing, where information from customer is rarely (if ever) send back to business or other customers • One-way creation of content (from business to consumers) • Push information to relatively passive audience

• Develops more social and interactive approaches that let customers express themselves and share their information with other customers as well as with business • Community creation of content

Design

• Presentation (views of the products/services) • Discovery mechanisms (e.g., Search) • Navigation

Web 2.0 is based on user-centered design, through interactive interface that enables identity, interaction and communities, i.e.,: • • • •

Platform

Web 1.0 (B2C), EDI or Web services (for B2B)

Legal Issues

Emphasized within agreed upon policies

Recognizable actors Conversation among actors Participation of actors Tag/Rank/Review/Comment, etc.

Web 2.0, Cloud, SOA Collaboration + participation + Openness Need to be emphasized

• Collaboration

• Community

Customers are no longer value takers, but they have become significant and produce marketable value in both individuals and collaborative actions (Zwass, 2010). Nowadays, customers are participating in business process with an active behavior (Hajli, 2013). The co-create environment has changed the passive behavior of users to become active content creators on the internet (Hajli, 2013; Zwass, 2010). The customer is highlighted as an important value co-creator (Kaltcheva, Patino, Laric, Pitta, & Imparato, 2014). Social commerce provides a collaborative environment that allows customers to generate their own content and share with others. Moreover, social commerce creates great opportunity for customers to participate in new product development (Hajli, 2014c). Social commerce users employ SNSs as a collaboration tools to share shopping experiences and product and services related information (Kim & Park, 2012). Collaboration between companies and engaged customers and among the customers themselves as well as with potential customers allows them to co-create value by generating content, providing feedback, and disseminating information. Engaged customers become partners who collaborate with sellers in the value-adding process to better satisfy their needs as well as the needs of other customers. (Sashi, 2012). This collective process of sharing data, information, and knowledge in social commerce by individuals vastly contributes to the growth of co-creation activities (Zwass, 2010). Creation of value by customers for firms occurs through a more elaborate mechanism than through purchase alone (Kumar et al., 2010). For example, Threadless.com uses an online community to encourage users to submit ideas about Tshirt designs and the best designs are selected as a part of products (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013b).

The web2.0 technologies and the increasing development of social media have affected many platforms in businesses sectors. These changes highlight the importance of researching people in groups (Hajli, 2013). One of the main differences between scommerce and e-commerce is that s-commerce is a community based environment (Stephen & Toubia, 2010; Zwass, 2010). Xiao, Huang, and Barnes (2015) define social commerce as “a community that connects sellers and buyers and allows them to seek and share product information”. For example, members as buyers or sellers in Taobao.com can join in a certain community based on their own interests, and once joined, they can interact with other buyers or sellers in the forum section; they can also follow or be followed by other buyers or sellers so that they see updated information such as product reviews and favorite items (Xiao et al., 2015). Furthermore, social commerce provides a platform for people to connect with friends, conduct online social networking activities and send product recommendations and/or discounts to friends (Ng, 2012). In social commerce community the aim of the seller is to make its customers to be brand advocacy and the aim of customer is to make informed purchasing decision (Ng, 2012). S-commerce strengthens the community power of consumers based on an information network that helps consumers in their purchasing decisions and satisfies customers’ needs and wants (HWang et al., 2014). Hajli (2013) proposed social commerce constructs as the main components of s-commerce development theses constructs: forums and communities, recommendations and referrals and rating and review (Hajli, 2013). Forums and communities considered as a key component that have strong effect on s-commerce (Hajli, 2013). However, literature emphasize that the next generations of online business will be based on communities (Hajli, 2013).

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• Social aspect As social commerce represent the extension of the traditional e-commerce, social aspect is one of the key characteristics of scommerce. S-commerce built on several types of social media, and focuses on social media-supported commercial activities (Chen & Shen, 2015). According to Zhang et al. (2014), social commerce websites provide customers with channel to create interpersonal connections with others customers. They have also the ability to participate in communities, share shopping experiences with other friends and advise them for the suitable purchasing decision (Hajli, 2013). As mentioned above (Section 4.4) numerous papers reviewed in this study have applied social theories (i.e. social support theory, social influence theory and social presence theory), in order to emphasize the importance of social aspect and its impact on customer’s purchasing decision (Chen & Shen, 2015), intension to buy (Hajli, 2015), purchasing behavior (Bai, Yao, and Dou, 2015) and continuance intension (Liang et al., 2011). For example, social support become key factor in business studies, (Hajli & Sims, 2015) highlighted that Social media enables the development of social support that leads to better purchasing decision in networked user’s environment. Liang et al. (2011) indicated that social support is key element in social commerce, which significantly affect customer’s intention to use s-commerce. Moreover, the characteristics of social commerce bases on content and social relationship (Zhang et al., 2014). Social relationship is the key element that differentiates social commerce from other forms of online commercial activities (Liang et al., 2011). Customers bale to interact with friends and other customers and share information about products and services, and they can communicate with the seller instantly using live chat. However, customer fell the sense of social presence during interacting with s-commerce sites (Kim, 2015). Social commerce sites provide more stimulus inputs to customer through various interaction means than traditional EC sites. social presence enhances customers’ focus on their activities in social commerce (Animesh & Pinsonneault, 2011). In social commerce, customers who perceive social presence are willing to share more information about commercial activities, and receiving recommendation in social commerce (Zhang et al., 2014). However, customers nowadays become more social, interrelates with the evolution of social computing (Turban, Strauss, & Lai, 2016). Ngai, Tao, and Moon (2015) conducted a systematic review of social media studies, and highlight that, social media drive a new set of models for various kind of businesses which brought a challenge to the traditional businesses. RQ3. What are the activities of s-commerce? Liang and Turban (2011) refer to Social commerce as “the delivery of e-commerce activities and transactions via the social media environment, mostly in social networks and by using Web 2.0 software”. Thus, social commerce activities combines both commercial activities and social activities. Since social commerce is social environment where, individuals can communicate and socially interact with each other, hence social activities is essential. Commercial activities represent any kind of activity that leads to commercial benefits (Liang & Turban, 2011). Another similar taxonomy of scommerce activities has been introduced by Saundage and Lee (2011), the study used Qualitative Content Analysis method that promotes subjective interpretation of content- based phenomena, from 73 of Fortune 500 businesses, the results show that, there are two main taxonomies for s-commerce activities: transactional and relational. Relational activities involve, promotion, customer support, recruitment and product development. While transactional activities related to sales. The Table 5 shows the s-commerce activities that have been investigated in the previous studies. RQ4. What are the research themes that are addressed in scommerce studies?

network Analysis 9% Social process 4%

Security & privacy 2%

Frim Performance 2%

Research Framework 4%

Adopon strategy 4% website design 10% business model 4%

user behavior 61%

Fig. 8. Distribution of s-commerce research themes.

Research theme is the central issue or topic that each study intent to explore and investigate (Liang & Turban, 2011). All research studies should have a clear theme. However, based on our data analysis, several themes have emerged. The identified themes are: user behavior, business model, website design, adoption strategy, Research framework, social process, network analysis, security and privacy and firm performance. Table 5 provides a detailed description of each theme. Fig. 8 shows an overview of the research themes that have been addressed in the primary studies. The first theme is user behavior, the majority of the studies under this theme, 65 studies which cover 61% of the primary studies. Most of the studies in this theme investigate the purchasing or buying intension of customers and examining the effect of factors such as Trust, loyalty and motivation on the decision making process of purchasing. Moreover, user adoption behavior of s-commerce is widely addressed in theme. The second theme is website design, where 10% of the studies classified under this theme. The focus on this theme was on the design features of s-commerce and the process of designing scommerce platform, for example Huang and Benyoucef (2013a) propose a new model and a set of principles for guiding social commerce design. The third theme was network analysis, 10 studies represent 9% focused on analyzing characteristics of social network sites and its impact on s-commerce, users and organizations. The forth research theme named adoption strategy with 4%. This theme involves the successful strategy of s-commerce adoption and its implications. The fifth research theme has only 4 studies that addressed s-commerce business models. Similarly with the sixth theme, 4 studies represent 4% which we call research framework, this theme related to the studies that provides s-commerce research framework to illustrate the main elements of s-commerce research to classify s-commerce studies and provide direction for further research. The seventh theme contains 4 studies, the aspects of this theme related to: social process design, social process mechanism, social media data analysis. The remaining two themes are firm performance and security and privacy policy with 2 studies each. The distribution of the studies according to their research theme presented in Fig. 8. Fig. 9 shows a mind map of the s-commerce themes and the topics addressed in each theme. The figure also illustrates the distribution of research methodologies used each studies. Most of the studies used quantitative methodology. For example, in user behavior theme which represent the majority of studies, 58 studies out of 65 used quantitative methodology, and applied survey as main research method. On the other hand, only 2 studies used both qualitative and quantitative methodologies (Mix method) which reported in network analysis and frim performance themes. Fur-

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Table 5 Social commerce activities. Social commerce Activities Social Activities Word of mouth Social referral incentive Promotions Advertising Co-creation User-generated content Information Sharing Commercial Activities Purchasing Group-buy

References (Amblee & Bui, 2011; Anderson, 2015; Balakrishnan, Dahnil, & Yi, 2014; Cheung & Lee, 2012; Hajli, 2014c; Kim & Park, 2012; Lai, 2010; Li & Gao, 2014; Wang & Chang, 2013; Wang & Yu, 2015) (Shi, Wang, Hong, & Pavlou, 2013) (Gonc¸alves Curty & Zhang, 2013; Komarov, Kazantsev, & Grevtsov, 2014; Saundage & Lee, 2011) (Gonc¸alves Curty & Zhang, 2013; Saundage & Lee, 2011) (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013a; Saundage & Lee, 2011; Zwass, 2010) (Bai, Yao, & Dou, 2015; Gonc¸alves Curty & Zhang, 2013; Siering & Muntermann, 2013) (Bai, Yao, Cong et al., 2015; Choon, Libo, & Chen, 2016; Jiang et al., 2014; Liu et al., 2016) (Balakrishnan et al., 2014; Hajli, 2013; HWang et al., 2014; Kim & Park, 2012; Ng, 2013; Saundage & Lee, 2011) (Jang et al., 2013; Kim, 2013; Lee & Lee, 2011; Shin, 2013; Yoo & Park, 2011; Yu, Pelaez, & Lang, 2014)

Fig. 9. Mind Map of s-commerce research themes, topic and the methodologies used.

Table 6 S-commerce research themes description. Study theme

Description

User behavior

Include the studies that investigate customers intension or behavior to conduct and actions such as (adopt, use, buy, share, engage, trust,) on s-commerce platform Include the studies that attempt to propose, design, or investigate s-commerce business models Include the studies that, discuss the design features of s-commerce website, and the studies that introduces guideline for designing s-commerce based on user preferences and user centered Include the studies that provide models or frameworks for adoption stagey of s-commerce and the studies that investigate the application and implications the s-commerce adoption on organizational level Include the studies that classify and explain the trend of social commerce research Include the studies that analyses the impact social process on the commercials activities and users of s-commerce Include the studies that analyze the effect of SNSs and its Characteristics on s-commerce Include the studies that address the privacy concerns and security issues related to use of s-commerce The studies that address the effect and implication of s-commerce on frim performance and the reflection on economic value of firms

Business Model Website design Adoption strategy Research framework Social process Network analysis Security & privacy policy Frim Performance

thermore, Experimental methodologies has been regularly used, 3 studies in user behavior, 2 studies in design, 2 studies in network analysis and 3 studies in social process. Few studies report qualitative methodologies, 2 studies in user behavior theme, 4 studies reported under design theme and 1 studies in each network analysis and research framework receptively. Finally, review methodology has been reported in some of the themes, the results show, 2 studies used review method in Adoption strategy theme as well as research framework theme, and 1 studies in each, user behavior theme, design theme and network analysis (Table 6).

RQ5. What are the limitations and gaps in current research of s-commerce? Social commerce has evolved rapidly and generated substantial interest among practitioners and researchers. However, during our review, we have noticed that, there were some topics still in early stage and need more investigation. The challenges of S-commerce research in coming few years can be classified in three aspects, theoretical aspect, design aspect and customer aspect. Although, social commerce increasingly adopted in practice, the theoretical foundation of s-commerce research still handful and scattered. The development of new theories in this area considered as one of

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Table 7 A research Agenda for understanding s-commerce. Topics

Questions

Theoretical considerations

• • • •

Customer behavior considerations

• Which factors should be considered for engaging customers in s-commerce? • To what extend s-commerce activities can influence customers to stick in the same s-commerce website? • To what extend s-commerce environment effects customer’s impulse buying?

Design and implementation considerations

• • • •

What other theories from different discipline are valid to better explain and describe s-commerce in IS? What IS Theories are valid to explain, describe online customer’s behavior in s-commerce environment? What is the impact of the diversity of theoretical perspective of s-commerce on business processes? Which business model can be introduced for s-commerce?

Which features are suitable for designing s-commerce Which critical success factors need to be considered during implementation of s-commerce websites? What is the impact of social aspect influence on online sellers’ decisions and process? Which strategies companies need to use to adopt to s-commerce activities?

the challenging areas in of information systems (IS) and marketing research in the coming decade (Hajli, 2014b; Wang & Zhang, 2012). Therefore, additional research efforts are needed to analyze and evaluate social commerce theoretically and empirically to advance our understanding of this important and expanding of this area of study (Bai, Yao, and Dou, 2015). The second aspect is s-commerce design. Website design is one of the topics that need more research, it is notable that, the research on how s-commerce can be designed? and what are the important features need to be considered in the design?, still in the early stage, for instance, previous studies indicate that, the s-commerce design is facing big challenges in developing user centered social commerce websites (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013b). S-commerce involves and relies on user participation. Therefore, without considering the users’ point of view in s-commerce design, s-commerce may not have the wide consumer acceptance that researchers and practitioners claim it deserves. However, challenges for social commerce design remain high (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013b). The third aspect is the customer. The emerging of s-commerce as new phenomenon in business has redefined the relationship with customer, due to the increasingly competitive environment. Recent study by Zhang and Benyoucef (2016) expose that understanding consumer behavior on social commerce is critical for companies that seek for better influence of consumer and utilize the power of social ties. In this study, we highlighted that there are a growing number of empirical studies examined the customer behavior in s-commerce context, however understanding customers’ needs and influence them to stick with the same seller is an important issue thus, Customer acquisition and retention are key success factors which need more research effort. Another key finding is that only one study has studied customer engagement behavior in s-commerce. Most of the studies focused on the intension of customers to buy in s-commerce websites, meaning that, transactional behavior was the main focus. While on the other hand, non-transactional customer behavior has become a key concept in the near future (Verhoef, Reinartz, & Krafft, 2010). Crossler (2014) clearly highlighted that there is a lack in identifying the factors that affect customer engagement intension in s-commerce. Therefore, there is strong need for better understanding of what motivate customers to engage in s-commerce activities? Which social and interactive ways in s-commerce to stimulate engagement and what role online companies can play to avoid customer switching behavior?. Moreover, social commerce sites as new environment rely on social interaction among customers, has made the experience of customer different form other context, customer’s impulsive buying behavior is one of the important consequences of s-commerce (Chen, Su, & Widjaja, 2016; Xiang, Zheng, Lee, & Zhao, 2016). This behavior need to be examined extensively in s-commerce con-

text. Furthermore, for future research agenda based on the current research gaps, there are some considerations need to be taken for further research. we were inspired by previous research (Balaid, Abd Rozan, Hikmi, & Memon, 2016; Guy, Fielt, & Gable, 2014) to develop the questions as direction for further research showing in Table 7.

6. Discussion and conclusion This study provides an overview of s-commerce concept. In order to understand s-commerce, we set five research questions that related to the nature of s-commerce. A systematic review approach used to answer these questions, the review included the studies between 2010 and 2015. After performing multiple processes, 110 studies were selected that focus on s-commerce. The rest of the studies were eliminated from the review as they did not fulfill the inclusion criteria or have not reached the quality level. The study provides a clear view on s-commerce by identifying the main differences between s-commerce and traditional e-commerce, Moreover, this study presents four Characteristics of s-commerce which are (interactively, collaboration, community and social aspect). From the data analysis, the selected studies classified under ninth research themes, and the majority of the 110 studies belong to research theme one user behavior and research theme two website design. While other areas had little attention such as frim performance, business model and security and privacy issue. In addition, the research methodologies used in these studies identified and classified. The majority of the studies used quantitative method 80% followed by qualitative and review methods with 7% and 5% respectively. And finally the limitation and gaps of the current research in s-commerce discussed, and summarized in three aspects that need more effort from researcher in the future, these aspects are: theoretical, design and customer aspects. Additionally research agenda for further research has been discussed. In conclusion, by reviewing the current studies on s-commerce, and provide a mind map of the development in this field of study, we consider this effort could be valuable for both academic and practitioners. As s-commerce still new area of this research, the finding of this review act as foundation for researchers, to help them identify new research equations, and get overview of current research to position their own work.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank Dr. Suraya Miskon and Dr. Halina Dahlan for their valuable inputs and contribution to this paper. We also acknowledge Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia for sponsor-

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ing Abdelsalam Busalim in his PhD Program at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.

Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2016. 06.005.

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