Factors That Determine the Adoption Intention of Direct Mobile Purchases through Social Media Apps

In the last few years, a number of social media e-business models including the social networking giants of Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram have offered direct purchase abilities to both their users and the involved enterprises. Hence, individuals can buy directly without having to leave the social media website. At the same time, there is a significant increase in the number of online purchases through mobile devices. To add to this, nowadays, the vast majority of internet users prefer to surf via their smartphone rather than a desktop PC. The aforementioned facts reveal the abilities and potential dynamics of Mobile Social Commerce (MSC), which is considered not only the present but also the future of e-commerce, as well as an area of prosperous academic and managerial concern. In spite of its several extant abilities and its booming future, MSC has been little examined until now. Therefore, this study aims to determine the factors that impact smartphone users' behavioral intention to adopt direct purchases through social media apps in a country where these kinds of m-services are not yet available. In specific, it extends the well-established Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model with the main ICT facilitators (i.e., convenience, reward and security) and inhibitors (i.e., risk and anxiety). The suggested conceptual model aims to increase the understanding on the topic and strengthen the importance of this major type of MSC. Convenience sampling was applied to gather the data and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was then performed to investigate the research hypotheses of the proposed conceptual model. The results show that performance expectancy exerts a positive impact on behavioral intention. Furthermore, all ICT facilitators examined do impact significantly on smartphone users' decision to adopt direct mobile purchases through social media apps, whereas anxiety exerts a negative effect.