The influence of word of mouth on customer loyalty to social commerce websites: Trust as a mediator

The term Social Commerce (s-commerce) is referred as a new trend where the sellers and buyers are connected for interacting on social media. Customer loyalty is an important tool for developing future marketing business strategies in s-commerce field. Moreover, the effect of Word-of-Mouth (WOM) on customer loyalty is also very important to the stability and sustainability of an s-commerce platform. While customer loyalty and WOM have been examined widely in various research contexts, a considerable gap is noticed in the literature on the study of customer loyalty. Therefore, the objective of this study was to identify the influence of WOM on customers’ loyalty to s-commerce websites. This research gathers survey data and applies Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM) structural equation modelling to analyze the data. The study found that WOM and trust have strong positive impact on loyalty to s-commerce website. The findings provide insights for s-commerce industries in developing strategies for improved implementation of s-commerce as well as the design of s-commerce sites.