While Online Social Network -OSN- tools adoption in socialization have received an extensive coverage in the literature (Chu & Sung, 2015; Olanrewaju et al., 2020), still their usage for social commerce (noted here as s-commerce) purpose in developing countries, especially in an Arab context is questionable and have received lesser attention from researchers despite its increasing rate (Shin, 2013; Mikalef et al., 2017; Mikalef et al., 2013; Cheng et al., 2019; Molinillo et al., 2020). Hence, more theoretical development is needed to describe the specific characteristic of s-commerce and the factors influencing consumers’ current adoption of s-commerce.
S-commerce is defined as the exchange-related activities that can be influenced by an individual’s Online Social Network (OSN) in computer-mediated social environments – where the activities correspond to need recognition, pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase stages. Taking advantage of user generated content and electronic word of mouth (eWoM), social interaction encourages sales and transactions by connecting people who have similar opinions but have no initial prior connection. S-commerce can come in three types: (i) using e-commerce website to build community (e.g. Airbnb), (ii) combining OSN tools and e-commerce activities (e.g. Instagram), and (ii) bring a third-party s-commerce platform (e.g. TripAdvisor). This classification includes the five categories proposed by Cheung & Thadani (2012): Online discussion forums, online consumer review sites, blogs, OSN tools, and online brand/ shopping. Regarding the mentioned types, this study focuses on OSN which is the fastest-growing driver of e-commerce referrals. It is driven by 3.5 billion social media users and 5.1 billion mobile users in 2019; 52% of marketers believe that s-commerce is one of the most important investment areas (Greenlight, 2020) and 87% of e-shoppers accepts that social media helps them in making shopping decision, and 40% of merchants use social media to generate sales (Global Digital Report, 2020). Moreover, it was observed that the adoption levels of s-commerce is limited despite that consumers are switching from e-commerce to s-commerce (Li & Ku, 2018), which gives a highlight about the importance of conducting more research (Salvatori & Marcantoni, 2015; Akman & Mishra, 2017; Shin, 2013; Mikalef et al., 2017; Abed, 2020; Cheng et al., 2019). In fact, s-commerce is still considered a novelty that is evolving. Indeed 36% of customers searching for information about products on OSN before purchasing, and the number of marketers who use them (e.g. Instagram) for business has grown from 53.2% to 73.2% over the last three years (Beaulac, 2020).