1 Introduction

As one of the main privileges of Web 2.0 applications, social commerce is a new trend accelerated by the revaluation taking place over the social media marketing area. This has contributed several utilities such as it enhances customers’ ability to establish a product’s content, to provide social support, to share information, to rate and review customers’ opinions, and to recommend brands. According to Liang et al. (2011), social commerce could be described as the main online commerce transactions that are empowered and conducted by the facilities of social media and Web 2.0 applications. The importance of studying this field comes as a result of the rapid growth in social commerce research in recent years (Lin et al. 2017). Thus, the related issues of social commerce have been recently considered as one of the main trends worth researching due to its impact on the business and marketing implications (Lin et al. 2017) and due to its ability to combine business, people, technology, and information (Algharabat et al. 2018; Gutierrez et al. 2019; Kamboj et al. 2018; Wang and Zhang 2012; Yang et al. 2017). Moreover, extant literature (Ahmad and Laroche 2017; Aswani et al. 2018; Kapoor et al. 2018; Lin et al. 2017; Manika et al. 2017) within the area of social commerce indicates the need for more detailed investigations in different topics in this field.

Extant literature in this field has discussed how social commerce constructs could influence customer engagement and customer value creation (Zhang et al. 2017), the impact of positive and negative review on electronic word of mouth within social commerce (Ahmad and Laroche 2017; Dwivedi et al. 2015; Roy et al. 2018; Saumya et al. 2018; Shareef et al. 2018c, 2019), and the relationship between social commerce and an organization’s strategies (Manika et al. 2017). To that end, Lin et al. (2017) posit that previous research in social commerce revealed two main trends: (1) innovation, corporate reputation, and user-generated content, and (2) online reviews, trust, and e-word-of-mouth, which have attracted more attention from researchers recently. In particular, within social commerce context, there are a few papers that have examined the impact of social commerce constructs on consumers’ value co-creation. For instance, Zhang et al. (2017) investigated the impact of customer engagement on customer value creation. Tajvidi et al. (2017) provided further evidence explaining how brand value co-creation could be shaped by the impacting role of social support and relationship quality. Kao et al. (2016) investigated, conceptually, co-creating value with customers. On the other hand, Kim and Park (2013) assert that social commerce characteristics impact consumer trust, which in turn affects trust performance. Li (2019) argues that social commerce constructs impact customers’ virtual experience, which in turn impacts trust in product recommendations.

2 Theoretical Foundation

The rational linkages between social commerce constructs, namely ratings and reviews; recommendations and referrals; and forums and communities with social trust, come as we aimed, within a Middle Eastern context, to understand the impact of social commerce constructs on creating social trust, which in turn affects value co-creation. Thus, due to the collectivist nature of the Middle Eastern societies, we believe that users’ ability to navigate social media platforms and thus to flow other customers’ responses via social commerce constructs often ends up with a type of trust (social). The main reason behind building such social trust comes as a result of (1) customers’ ability to trust more the content coming from the customers’ community rather than that coming from the organizational side. (2) Customers find other customers’ content and posts more useful and beneficial to their purchasing and consuming process, as long as the level of social trust is high from the customer’s perspective. Accordingly, at this stage users will have a kind of trust (i.e., social) that will enhance SNSs’ interaction between customers and the online enterprise as well as between customers themselves to co-create their personal values (e.g. utilitarian, hedonic, and social). Thus, customers with similar values are expected to get together at the same SNS. Therefore, we noticed that extant literature did not explore or link the impact of social commerce constructs on social trust, which in turn impact customer value co-creation. Hence, the current research aims to identify this gap and to propose a conceptual framework that highlights the linkage between social commerce constructs, social trust, and customer value co-creation. We did not find any research in the context of social commerce that linked the nature of the relationships between the proposed constructs of the current study. For instance, is there any relationship between social commerce constructs (second-order) and social trust? Does social trust in SNSs influence customer value co-creation from a social commerce perspective? Such issues will be discussed further in the conceptual model section.

3 Literature Review and Proposed Hypotheses

3.1 Social Commerce Constructs

Social commerce is a sub-set of e-commerce that enables consumers to be actively engaged in a commercial exchange process in social media platforms (Huang and Benyoucef 2013; Rana et al. 2019; Shareef et al. 2018a, b; Shiau et al. 2017, 2018), and allows the creation of content that allows users to share their experiences over different social media platforms via sharing their information. There are two types of social commerce taking place: (1) sites that are utilizing Web 2.0 tools (e.g., Amazon) and that facilitate customers’ content generation, although this type makes consumers’ interactions limited, due to the lack of customers’ ability to tag others and to send messages privately (Huang and Benyoucef 2013); (2) SNSs that utilize e-commerce features. Such social commerce platforms provide customers with channels to socially connect with others and make them more willing to initiate their value co-creation by sharing more experiences and information as well as creating their own content. In line with Curty and Zhang (2013), social commerce is a matter of commercial activities that take their own place over social media platforms. Similarly, Stephen and Toubia (2010, p. 215) define social commerce as “forms of Internet-based social media that allow people to participate actively in the marketing and selling of products in online marketplaces and communities”. Hajli (2015) posits that the social commerce construct consists of the three dimensions: ratings and reviews (regarding a particular brand or product over the social media platform which provides other customers with the needed information), recommendations and referrals (based on consumers’ experience), and forums and communities (which facilitate consumers’ social interactions regarding a particular brand).

As discussed above, the area of social commerce is quite new, and a limited number of studies have examined this phenomenon and its related issues. Accordingly, to gain further understanding about how a customer’s perception could be affected by the role of social commerce, a number of exploratory interviews were conducted. Practically, ten master and ten bachelor students from the University of Jordan were interviewed before proposing the current study model. Indeed, it was a very strong necessity to see how social commerce could enhance customer social trust as this relationship has not been fully explained by prior studies. Most participants have assured that they are likely to trust and depend on the main aspects of social commerce such as ratings and reviews, recommendations and referrals, and forums and communities. To put it differently, those respondents express that they trust more the content coming from a customers’ community rather than that from the organizational side. Also important is that a good number of participants mentioned that they are more likely to find such content and posts more useful and beneficial to their purchasing and consuming process if they have a higher level of social trust. This, in turn, supports including functional value as a consequence of social trust in the conceptual model. Other interviewees also demonstrated that they have more fun, joy, and enjoyment as long as the level of social trust is more. Thus, this study recognizes the need to examine the impact of social trust on hedonic value. Social value was also another important outcome of social trust that has been reported by an adequate number of interviewees, which, in turn, asserts the importance of the inclusion of a causal path between social trust and social value.

3.2 Customer Value Co-creation

Previous research on value co-creation (i.e. Alalwan et al. 2017; Baabdullah et al. 2019; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004; Vargo and Lusch 2008) asserts that this notion is based on the dialogue and interactions between producers and customers to co-create their value via building together personalized service (Grönroos 2008; Schau et al. 2009). Therefore, recent research on social media conceptualizes customer value co-creation according to the interaction between customers and the online enterprise as well as between customers themselves (Schau et al. 2009). Thus, within SNSs customers are interacting and socializing with each other to achieve different values (e.g. utilitarian, hedonic, and social) (Baabdullah 2018a). Extant literature regarding value co-creation (Alalwan et al. 2018a, b, c; Algharabat 2018; Dholakia et al. 2004; Foster et al. 2010; Shareef et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2017) within SNSs shows that value co-creation consists of three dimensions: (1) functional (i.e. information seeking and updating; Lee et al. 2014; Zhang et al. 2017), (2) hedonic (i.e., emotions and feelings, Zhang et al. 2017), and (3) social value (i.e. customers’ social self-conception and having social interaction via social media platforms; Jahn and Kunz 2012; Yu et al. 2013; Zhang et al. 2017). Thus, customers with similar values are expected to get together at the same SNS (Baabdullah 2018b).

3.3 Social Commerce Constructs and Social Trust

Social trust relates to an individual trait which shapes a customer’s worldview regarding the benevolence of other users within SNSs. Therefore, social trust could be deified as customers believe regarding other SNSs users trustworthiness (Rothstein and Uslaner 2005; You 2012). Within the context of social commerce, there have been discussions on the importance of social trust as a tool which provides SNSs with benefits such as reducing transaction costs (Mutz 2005), increasing the probability of customers shopping online (Mutz 2005), enhancing economic growth for the targeted countries (Mutz 2005), and reducing risks (regarding security and privacy and online behaviour) associated with buying brands over SNSs (Aljifri et al. 2003; Grazioli and Jarvenpaa 2000; Mutz 2005). All the above benefits come as a result of people buying within the SNSs not knowing each other. Therefore, social trust is considered as an important factor within this context. Thus, social commerce using Web 2.0 facilitates customers’ interaction and increases their social trust via their ratings and reviews over a particular SNS (Han and Windsor 2011; Swamynathan et al. 2008). Hence customers trust the information provided by other customers in comparison to the e-vendor (Do-Hyung et al. 2007). As a result of the social interactions (via consumers’ ratings and reviews and recommendations and referrals), customers allows themselves to exchange information and expediencies with other customers which enrich their knowledge, increase their trust of the brands, and impact their purchase decisions (Lu et al. 2010).

As discussed above, the area of social commerce is quite new, and a limited number of studies have examined this phenomenon and its related issues. This is in addition to the fact that the main outcomes of customer social trust are not adequately covered by prior studies. Accordingly, to gain further understanding about how a customer’s perception could be affected by the role of social commerce, a number of exploratory interviews were conducted. Practically, ten master and ten bachelor students in the University of Jordan were interviewed before proposing the current study model. Indeed, it was a very strong necessity to see how social commerce could enhance the customer social trust as this relationship has not fully explained by prior studies. Most participants have assured that they are likely to trust and depend on the main aspects of social commerce such as ratings and reviews, recommendations and referrals, and forums and communities. To put it differently, those respondents express that they trust more the content coming from a customers’ community rather than that from the organizational side. Also important is that a good number of participants mentioned that they are more likely to find such content and posts more useful and beneficial to their purchasing and consuming process if they have a higher level of social trust. This, in turn, supports including functional value as a consequence of social trust in the conceptual model. Other interviewees also demonstrated that they have more fun, joy, and enjoyment if they have a higher level of social trust. Accordingly, it was important to consider the impact of social trust on hedonic value. Social value was also another important outcome of social trust that has been reported by an adequate number of interviewees, which, in turn, asserts importance of the inclusion of a causal path between social trust and social value. Figure 3.1 was therefore proposed on the results of exploratory interviews conducted by the current study research group alongside what has been discussed and proved by prior studies in the related area, as will be discussed in the rest of this paper (for the proposed items that can be used for future research using the current research proposed model, see Appendix).

Fig. 3.1
A model describes how social commerce constructs referrals, recommendations, ratings, reviews, forums, communities, social trust, and functional, hedonic, and social values.

Proposed research model. (Adapted from: Chu and Choi 2011, Zhang et al. 2017)

Full size image

A positive association has been proved by prior studies between different dimensions of social commerce and social trust. For instance, Park (2002) posits the positive relationship between customers’ participation, in an online context, and trust among customers. Sashi (2012) asserts that customers’ participation in different activities online enhanced their emotional bonds, commitment, and trust. Extant literature on online brand communities (Dabholkar and Sheng 2012; Kamboj et al. 2018; So et al. 2014) asserts the positive relationships between customers’ participation, interaction, and trust. The authors propose that social commerce constructs positively impact social trust. Kim and Park (2013) assert that trust in social commerce organizations increase customers’ intentions (purchase and word-of mouth). Thus, we propose the following:

Proposition 1a

There is a positive relationship between social commerce constructs (second-order) and social trust.

3.4 Social Commerce Constructs and Customer Value Co-creation

Previous research on social commerce posits the positive relationship between social commerce constructs and customer value co-creation. For instance, Gensler et al. (2013) assert that social media strengthens the interaction between online communities and thus enhances consumers’ brand-generated stories with other online community members. Other researchers posit the positive relationship between some of the dimensions of social commerce constructs and customer value co-creation. For instance, Algharabat (2017) found a positive relationship between liking, sharing information, and social value. As stated by Richard and Guppy (2014), customers usually follow and like brands on social media platforms as a kind of expression about their intention to catch and be updated about all news and information regarding the targeted brands. For instance, with intention to share their experience and knowledge regarding a particular brand, a customer is more likely to be engaged in different activities and conversations on the brands posted in Facebook pages. Consumers’ interaction with a particular brand, in the form of liking it on Facebook, is a tool that informs friends on Facebook about the brand and hence affects consumers’ social value (Wallace et al. 2017). Thus,

Proposition 1b

There is a positive relationship between social commerce constructs (second-order) and customer value co-creation.

3.5 Social Trust and Customer Value Co-creation

Within the service-dominant logic, trust is formulated as a result of the dialogue and customers’ interactions (Durugbo and Pawar 2014); therefore, co-creation is the expected result. Previous research (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004) found a positive relationship between trust and co-creation. For instance, in a relationship which is characterized by a high level of trust, customers are motivated to be involved in a social exchange. Accordingly, over the online community, a level of customers’ trust between themselves is highly requested to guarantee an extant level of value co-creation (Alalwan et al. 2016; Ridings et al. 2002; Wu and Sukoco 2010). In the context of SNSs, the interaction between customers and enterprise as well as customers resulted in getting more information regarding the brand or product category. Therefore, customers would pay more attention to other trusted customers in order to have more useful information from a particular SNS (Lin and Lu 2011; Zhang et al. 2017). Meanwhile, other customers used many of the SNSs to get more pleasure and emotional benefits (Van der Heijden 2004; Zhang et al. 2017) due to the nature of the content, which contained humour and jokes. Additionally, customers’ main reasons to participate in social commerce could be justified in them showing their status. Thus, we propose that social trust should be the main antecedents for customers’ values. Hence, we propose the following:

Proposition 2a

There is a positive relationship between social trust and customer hedonic value.

Proposition 2b

There is a positive relationship between social trust and customer utilitarian value.

Proposition 2c

There is a positive relationship between social trust and customer social value.

4 Discussion

4.1 Empirical Methodologies

Based on extant literature, to test our proposed theoretical model we advise researchers to conduct a survey to collect the data using social media platforms as their destination. Therefore, to measure social commerce constructs, we recommend using Hajli’s (2015) scale (second-order), which consists of four items to measure referrals and recommendations, four items to measure forums and communities, and three items to measure ratings and reviews (Pagani and Mirabello 2011). To measure social trust, we recommend researchers employ Chu and Choi’s (2011) scale. To measure customer value co-creation dimensions (functional, hedonic, and social values), we recommend researchers employ four items of functional value (Jahn and Kunz 2012; Zhang et al. 2017), three items of hedonic value (Jahn and Kunz 2012; Zhang et al. 2017), and three items of social value (Jahn and Kunz 2012; Zhang et al. 2017).

4.2 Theoretical Contributions

This research investigates the impact of social commerce constructs on social trust, which, in turn, impacts the three dimensions of customer value co-creation (functional, hedonic, and social values) in SNSs. Therefore, the authors developed a theoretical model for studying the relationships between the study constructs. Furthermore, the authors also propose social trust in SNSs as a mediator between social commerce constructs and customer value co-creation. The developed model in the current study investigates the impact of a new topic in marketing research from three perspectives. First, the development of our model should advance marketing scholars’ knowledge on how employing social commerce constructs in SNSs affects social trust. This contributes to the extant literature by adding, theoretically, more literature to fill this gap in studying the impacts of social commerce constructs on social trust, which has not been tested enough empirically using SNS platforms. Second, this study considers one of the earliest studies which discovered the relationship between social trust and customer value co-creation. Prior research focused on different measures to measure customer value co-creation but not the three dimensions (functional, hedonic, and social values) of value which have been proposed in this research. Third, studying the effect of the mediation impact of social trust between social commerce constructs and customer value co-creation is considered another theoretical contribution in the current study.

5 Conclusion

The current research aims to identify this gap and to propose a conceptual framework which highlights the linkage between social commerce constructs, social trust, and customer value co-creation. A number of exploratory interviews were conducted to gain further understanding about how the customer’s perception of customer value co-creation and social trust could be affected by the role of social commerce. Accordingly, the current model proposes that social commerce constructs (second-order; ratings and reviews, recommendations and referrals, and forums and communities) impacts social trust, which in turn affects customer value co-creation dimensions (functional value, hedonic value, and social value) in social network sites (SNSs). Based on extant literature, to test our proposed theoretical model we advise researchers to conduct a survey to collect the data using social media platforms as their destination.

5.1 Limitations and Future Research Directions

Our research suffers from the following limitations. First, we have proposed a theoretical framework for our study which has not been tested. We recommend future research to test empirically our proposed model. Second, it is possible that we missed some constructs, such as purchase intension of the SNSs, or other types of trust. Therefore, we recommend future research to add and test such constructs. Third, we employed the scale of previous research (Alalwan 2018; Jahn and Kunz 2012; Zhang et al. 2017) to measure customer value co-creation. Thus, we recommend researchers employ other scales (Dong et al. 2008) for customer value co-creation and compare the results.