Explaining Individuals’ Usage of Social Commerce: A Data Mining Approach

摘要

With the use of Web 2.0 technology, e-commerce is undergoing a radical change that enriches consumer involvement and enables a better understanding of economic value. This emerging phenomenon is known as social commerce. Social commerce (s-commerce) presents a new alternative for consumers to search for and find information about products they are seeking to buy. In spite of its universality, the adoption of this burgeoning technology is affected by several factors. This research project is an initial attempt to explore individuals’ intention of s-commerce usage through the data mining approach. The data was collected via a web-based questionnaire survey of 360 social network site (SNS) users in Jordan. Data mining techniques were then used to analyze the collected data in order to figure out what group of features is best for predicting s-commerce adoption among SNS users. The results showed that data characteristics related to gender, monthly income, civil status, number of connections, and prior online shopping experience are key factors in the classification process. The findings may assist researchers in investigating social commerce issues and aid practitioners in developing new s-commerce strategies.