Understanding the role of technology attractiveness in promoting social commerce engagement: Moderating effect of personal interest

The rapid growth and increasing convergence of social networking and e-commerce open up a new era of social commerce, wherein people are encouraged to engage in various social interactions that are conducive to commercial activities. However, current studies are limited in investigating the concept of social commerce engagement and the processes through which social commerce engagement is established. Drawing upon interpersonal attraction theory and relationship management perspective, this study proposes a research model to address the influences of technology attractiveness, which is composed of task, social, and physical attractiveness, on social commerce involvement and engagement. Considering that social interactions in social commerce community are often stimulated by users’ common interests in products and consumption activities, the moderating role of personal interest is further examined by applying personality literature to reveal how technology attractiveness and community involvement take effect in the social commerce context. Empirical results indicate that all the three aspects of technology attractiveness (i.e., task, social, and physical attractiveness) are positively associated with community involvement, which in turn affects social commerce engagement. In particular, involvement fully mediates the impact of physical attractiveness and partially mediates the effects of task and social attractiveness. Personal interest enhances the effect of social attractiveness, whereas it weakens the effect of physical attractiveness on community involvement. Personal interest also strengthens the positive relationship between community involvement and social commerce engagement. Findings emerged from this study will contribute to the current understanding of how social commerce engagement is formed and help practitioners improve community attractiveness and deliver differential attractiveness to users with different levels of personal interest.