The influence of social presence and trust on customers’ loyalty to social commerce websites

Social Commerce (s-commerce) is a relatively new form of electronic commerce built around the notion of customer-oriented social website content, and made possible by the development of Web 2.0 technology. Businesses in this field, in order to develop effective marketing strategies, must understand the dynamics of how client loyalty is established and maintained. Scholars have explored the issue of customer loyalty from many angles, including social marketing, online environments and eCommerce. Some researchers have focused their studies on the behavioural dimension of customer loyalty, others on its attitudinal dimension, and still others on the composite dimension of customer loyalty. Though the importance of these individual influences has been broadly accepted, the societal aspect of s-commerce is still poorly understood, as is the influence on s-commerce of trust and social presence. The objective of this study is thus to investigate the impact of social presence (SP) and trust on s-commerce customer loyalty. Data were collected from s-commerce website users in Australia using a web-based questionnaire. Based on the results of the survey, social presence and trust both have significant influence on customer loyalty to s-commerce websites. The findings offer insight to business decision-makers who hope to improve their implementation of s-commerce as well as the design of their sites.