Social Commerce: Shoppable Posts und deren Einfluss auf die Kaufabsicht von Konsument:innen

Abstract

Over the last decade, the synergies of social media and e-commerce have led to a rapid development of social commerce. Endless scrolling and socially influenced impulse purchases more and more influence purchasing decisions. Inspiration, social interaction and offered products are merging into a digital shopping experience. Retailers are given an unprecedented opportunity to reach potential customers in their social environment through continuously evolving social commerce applications. Shoppable posts can be seen as an opportunity to be highly accepted by customers. They make it possible to link products in a post, add product details and buy directly from retailers without changing media. This master thesis aims at showing the extent to which shoppable posts influence consumers’ purchase intentions. To achieve the objectives of this master thesis, after an introduction in chapter 1, relevant terms are defined and delimited in chapter 2. In chapter 3 the relevant literature on consumers purchasing decisions is examined. As a subsequent theoretical chapter, chapter 4 is dedicated to shoppable posts as an instrument of social commerce. In chapter 5, the empirical research design, the conduction and evaluation of the empirical research are described, while in chapter 6, the results are discussed. In chapter 7, the theoretical and empirical results are summarised. Finally, chapter 8 comprises a conclusion of this work and an outlook, recommendations for action, a limitation as well as a reference to further research potential. The research methodology included a literature review to process the relevant theory and an empirical study based on an online survey with an integrated experiment using a between-subjects design. The results of this master thesis indicate that there is no significant difference in purchase intention regarding shoppable posts and regular posts. So far, shoppable posts have tended to be used by consumers as a source of inspiration, selection and evaluation, but not to make a direct purchase in the application or via product link. Furthermore, this research shows that it is important for retailers to create authentic social media posts – regardless of whether they are shoppable or not – and to show further ambitions regarding social commerce to be considered in the continuous evaluation process of consumers’ non-stop customer experience. Keywords: shoppable post, social commerce, purchase intention, consumer behaviour

Date of Award	2024
Original language	German (Austria)
Awarding Institution	Johannes Kepler University Linz
Supervisor	Harald Kindermann (Supervisor)