Modeling the Role of C2C Information Quality on Purchase Decision in Facebook

TL;DR: This study exhibits a model to influences of C2C communication on Bangladeshi consumers’ purchase decision in the online communities of F-Commerce and shows that Argument Quality, Source Credibility and Tie Strength positively influence Purchase Decision through Product Usefulness Evaluation (PUE).

Abstract: A market which provides an innovative way to allow customers to interact with each other called Customer-to-customer (C2C) market. In C2C communications, online communities play an important role in decision making to buy a product. This investigation develops a research model for online communities of Facebook commerce (F-Commerce) in Bangladesh region, which is based on Information Adoption Model (IAM). This study exhibits a model to influences of C2C communication on Bangladeshi consumers’ purchase decision in the online communities of F-Commerce. The proposed model used the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique to test 120 effective survey data. This survey data has been taken from the Bangladesh Facebook users and strongly involved in product buy-sell at F-Commerce. The analyzed results show that Argument Quality (AQ), Source Credibility (SC) and Tie Strength (TS) positively influence Purchase Decision (PD) through Product Usefulness Evaluation (PUE). In addition, Tie Strength exhibits difference effect on Product Usefulness Evaluation between the contexts of consumers communicating with virtual consumers relationships. Theoretical and executive implications are discussed for constructing our proposed model.

Summary

1 Introduction

• At present people are getting easier to communicate with each other by the computer mediated communication (CMC) technologies called social media [1].
• Due to the growing amount web traffic, the social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Friendster, CyWorld and MySpace are the crucial web applications to access the various visitors in rapid time now a day.
• With the benefit of friend recommendations, widespread sharing and dynamic responses, Facebook become one of the most powerful tool for today’s’ social networking based ecommerce.
• The literature review section has been demonstrated the importance about these five attributes.
• This model has revealed which is based on the Information Adoption Model (IAM).

2 Literature Review

• A recent study proposed a model which based on the Information Adoption Model (IAM) [18].
• The authors applied this research model in Bangladeshi domain and shown more specific consumers behavior analysis in F-commerce.
• Another study analyzed 297 effective data for understanding the influences of system quality, information quality, and service quality for a website to satisfy their consumers [21].
• A theory evaluates using 307 effective data and reveals that cognitive and relational capital positively affects buyers’ loyalty [29].
• One team researchers established a casual model to investigate review quality effect on product and purchase intention [30].

3 Research Model and Hypothesis Development

• The intention of a consumer to purchase a product depends on information quality shown by the information adoption model [32], [33].
• Another models user decision making depends on persuasive information [38].
• Based on this shared knowledge the consumer can easily make a judgment which helps those to make the future prediction about consumer’s behaviors [39].
• The strong ties information are more influential in consumer decision making than that from weak ties in the context of offline word of mouth (WOM) communications or C2C interaction [45].
• Similarly, the present study proposed that the influence of TS on the PUE is stronger when consumers mainly communicate with virtual consumer relationships at Facebook communities.

4.1 Data Collection and Measurement

• A survey was utilized to examine the impact of C2C communication on customer purchase choice.
• The authors did 120 surveys among the Bangladeshi Facebook users who are university students [46].
• The questionnaire survey consists of five attributes, which are AQ, TS, SC, PUE and PD (See Table 1.).
• Following the recommended two-stage analytical procedures [49], the authors tested the measurement model (validity and reliability of the measures) followed by an examination of the structural model (testing the hypothesized relationship).
• To test the significance of the path coefficients (p) and the loadings a bootstrapping method was used [50].

4.2 Sample Profile

• The demographic information of the respondents tabulated in Table 2, where derived from descriptive analysis [51].
• Most of the people are directly or indirectly connected to the internet as well as Facebook.
• In Table 1, the authors have analyzed their survey based on gender.
• Moreover, the authors separate the males and females and found that the male percentage is 23.3% and the female percentage is 76.7%.

5.1 Model Measurement

• To assess the measurement model, two types of validity will be examined, first the convergent validity and then the discriminant validity [52].
• The convergent validity of the measurement is usually ascertained by examining the loadings, average variance extracted and also the composite reliability [53].
• The composite reliabilities were all higher than 0.7 and the AVE (Average Variance Extracted) was also higher than 0.5 as suggested in the literature (see Table 4).
• The discriminant validity of the measures (the degree to which items differentiate among constructs or measure distinct concepts) was examined by following criterion of comparing the correlations between constructs and the square root of the average variance extracted for that construct (see Table 5).
• All the values on the diagonals were greater than the corresponding row and column values indicating the measures were discriminant.

5.2 Structural Model

• To assess the structural model (Structural equation modeling) [54] suggested looking at the path coefficients (p), effect sizes (f 2 ), beta (β) and the corresponding t-statistic [55] via a bootstrapping procedure with a resample of various data or information.
• They also suggested that in addition to these basic measures researchers should also report the effect sizes (f 2 ) [56].
• The outcomes of structural model test display that the path coefficients (p) are statistically significant (p < 0.01), barring for the coefficients of control attributes to PD.
• As the authors hypothesized that PUE would positively effect on PD, hypothesis H1 is susceptible.
• As the authors hypothesized that AQ, SC, and TS would positively affect PUE, hypotheses H2, H3, and H4 are adopted.

6 Discussion

• The research goal of this study was to investigate the role of information quality in increasing purchase intention in F-commerce for Bangladesh aspects.
• Hence PUE has a positive effect on the PD of consumers.
• This result indicated that perceived status among friends and instructor is not an important factor to students compared to other factors.
• This suggests that consumers believe that sharing knowledge will lead to desirable outcomes and favorable consequences.
• The authors identified the objectives that increase the PD of F-commerce.

Figures

Fig. 1. Our research model.

Table 2. Demographic information of different genders.

Table 3. Demographic information of several ages.

Table 1. Five utilized attributes and their abbreviations.

Full text

HAL Id: hal-02274192
https://hal.inria.fr/hal-02274192
Submitted on 29 Aug 2019
HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entic research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.
L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diusion de documents
scientiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.
Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License
Modeling the Role of C2C Information Quality on
Purchase Decision in Facebook
Rata Haque, Imran Mahmud, Md. Hasan Sharif, S. Rayhan Kabir, Arpita
Chowdhury, Farzana Akter, Amatul Bushra Akhi
To cite this version:
Rata Haque, Imran Mahmud, Md. Hasan Sharif, S. Rayhan Kabir, Arpita Chowdhury, et al..
Modeling the Role of C2C Information Quality on Purchase Decision in Facebook. 17th Conference on
e-Business, e-Services and e-Society (I3E), Oct 2018, Kuwait City, Kuwait. pp.244-254, �10.1007/978-
3-030-02131-3_22�. �hal-02274192�

The Role of C2C Information Quality of Bangladeshi
Users in Facebook Commerce
Rafita Haque
1, 2
, Imran Mahmud
2
, Md. Hasan Sharif
2
, S. Rayhan Kabir
2
, Arpita
Chowdhury
1
, Farzana Akter
3
and Amatul Bushra Akhi
3
1
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Asian University of Bangladesh,
Dhaka, Bangladesh
rafitahaque93@gmail.com, arpitachy10@yahoo.com
2
Department of Software Engineering, Daffodil International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
rafita.swe@diu.edu.bd,imranmahmud@daffodilvarsity.edu.bd,
sharif.swe@diu.edu.bd, rayhan561@diu.edu.bd
2
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Daffodil International University,
Dhaka, Bangladesh
farzana.cse@diu.edu.bd, akhi.cse@diu.edu.bd
Abstract. A market which provides an innovative way to allow customers to
interact with each other called Customer-to-customer (C2C) market. In C2C
communications, online communities play an important role in decision making
to buy a product. This investigation develops a research model for online
communities of Facebook commerce (F-Commerce) in Bangladesh region,
which is based on Information Adoption Model (IAM). This study exhibits a
model to influences of C2C communication on Bangladeshi consumers’
purchase decision in the online communities of F-Commerce. The proposed
model used the Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique to test 120 effective
survey data. This survey data has been taken from the Bangladesh Facebook
users and strongly involved in product buy-sell at F-Commerce. The analyzed
results show that Argument Quality (AQ), Source Credibility (SC) and Tie
Strength (TS) positively influence Purchase Decision (PD) through Product
Usefulness Evaluation (PUE). In addition, Tie Strength exhibits difference
effect on Product Usefulness Evaluation between the contexts of consumers
communicating with virtual consumers relationships. Theoretical and executive
implications are discussed for constructing our proposed model.
Keywords: Social Media, Facebook commerce, Consumer to Consumer (C2C).
1 Introduction
At present people are getting easier to communicate with each other by the computer
mediated communication (CMC) technologies called social media [1]. Due to the
growing amount web traffic, the social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook,
Friendster, CyWorld and MySpace are the crucial web applications to access the
various visitors in rapid time now a day. Under the statistics collected by Alexa,

2
which is a web traffic data analytics company, Facebook obtained the third rank of the
most viewed websites in 2018 after Google and YouTube [2]. With the benefit of
friend recommendations, widespread sharing and dynamic responses, Facebook
become one of the most powerful tool for today’s’ social networking based e-
commerce. Facebook commerce (F-commerce) prescribes to the purchase and selling
of products through Facebook [3]. Furthermore, Facebook announced unique features
within the site. To illustrate, famous “like” button, rapid “share”, easy “tag”, dynamic
“comment” and “friend” relationships. These features could positively affect the
customers’ purchase intension by obtaining more confident after friends
recommendation. Social Networking Services (SNSs) consent the people and online
sellers to engage in consumer-to-consumer social commerce (C2C s-commerce) [4]
[6]. Nowadays, Facebook users are cumulatively using the Facebook website to
conduct the trade operations, by posting advertisements and buying or selling
products from each other. This type of conception is called as a Facebook C2C social
commerce [7].
In Bangladesh the popularities of F-commerce are increasing, almost two
thousands of Facebook pages are available [8–10]. These survey flourished
manuscript has developed based on 5 attributes (See Table 1). There are Argument
Quality (AQ) [11], Tie Strength (TS) [12], Source Credibility (SC) [13], Product
Usefulness Evaluation (PUE) [14] and Purchase Decision (PD) [15]. We have
utilized these attributes because these attributes are very helpful and mostly used for
finding the information quality in e-commerce. The literature review section has been
demonstrated the importance about these five attributes. Our exploration develops a
research model to investigate the influence of Facebook C2C communication on
consumers’ purchase decision. It also compares the differences of real and virtual
relationship environments to better understand consumers’ purchase decision in F-
Commerce. This model has revealed which is based on the Information Adoption
Model (IAM). IAM is a relatively new, effective and practical approach [16, 17]. Our
findings can provide the better understanding of the role of C2C communication in
Facebook communities for consumer behavior research in Bangladeshi domain.
Table 1. Five utilized attributes and their abbreviations.
Attributes
Abbreviation
Argument Quality
AQ
Tie Strength
TS
Source Credibility
SC
Product Usefulness Evaluation
PUE
Purchase Decision
PD
2 Literature Review
A recent study proposed a model which based on the Information Adoption Model
(IAM) [18]. The results of this research have shown that AQ, SC, and TS positively

3
influence the purchase decision, where used Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique
[19, 20]. We applied this research model in Bangladeshi domain and shown more
specific consumers behavior analysis in F-commerce.
Another study analyzed 297 effective data for understanding the influences of
system quality, information quality, and service quality for a website to satisfy their
consumers [21]. The results of the conception to evaluate the trustworthiness of online
sellers showed that, people are the key factors that make consumers trust towards
online sellers [22]. The social media survey of consumer has shown that trust is more
usefulness to make the intention of consumers to purchase through social networking
sites [23]. An investigation managed to the effects of F-commerce browsing and
usage intensity in predicting urge to purchase and impulse purchase behavior among
the consumers [24]. An approach used 180 data that directly investigate and evaluate
the success of e-commerce for any small and medium-sized companies [25]. E-
commerce service based another research have measured the requirements feasibility
for B2C environment [26].
A social learning theory has developed to examine customers’ learning behaviors
[27]. A decision support model which has exhibited to manage the buyer risk and
improves the quality of supplier development [28]. A theory evaluates using 307
effective data and reveals that cognitive and relational capital positively affects
buyers’ loyalty [29]. One team researchers established a casual model to investigate
review quality effect on product and purchase intention [30]. In this study, using 349
experimental data that proved demographically similar reviewers enhanced the effect
of review quality.
In the above literature review, we observe that most of the research work focused
on information quality which makes an intention for the consumer to purchase a
product. We have divided the C2C information quality [31] of F-commerce into AQ,
TS, SC, PUE and PD sections.
3 Research Model and Hypothesis Development
The intention of a consumer to purchase a product depends on information quality
shown by the information adoption model [32], [33]. C2C communication refers to
the transfer of the variety of information from one customer to another customer in a
way that has the potential to change their preferences, actual purchase behavior, or the
way they further interact with others [34]. In line with the information adoption
model, the present study proposes that PUE (Product Usefulness Evaluation) has a
positive influence on the PD (Purchase Decision) of consumers. The hypothesis 1 is
shown as follows:
H1: A positive connection between PUE and PD in F-commerce for Bangladesh
domain.
According to the dual action models user decision making depends on persuasive
information [35]. In accordance with information adoption model, the AQ (Argument

4
Quality) data [36] is a momentous middle sign which exerts an essential influence on
information. The Bangladeshi consumers are always eager to know about the product
which is suitable for their personal usage [37]. So that, in the online marking, the
information quality and consultation of related products is highly appreciated. In the
context of AQ information is very meaningful because this makes a clear
consciousness about the selected product. The hypothesis 2 is shown as follows:
H2: AQ is positively related to PUE in Bangladesh region.
Another models user decision making depends on persuasive information [38]. The
most common feature of C2C communication is the consumers easily get the advice
from other consumers. Based on this shared knowledge the consumer can easily make
a judgment which helps those to make the future prediction about consumer’s
behaviors [39]. The judgment provides a cue that SC (Source Credibility) is very
important to judge product usefulness evaluation (PUE). According to information
adoption model, the SC of informational data is a potential peripheral cue which
exerts a significant impact on information usefulness. The hypothesis 3 is shown as
follows:
H3: SC is positively related to PUE.
Hence, in line with the information adoption model, the present study proposes
that SC has a positive impact on the PUE. Members can communicate with others
without time and space limitation in online communities [40]. Product messages come
from stronger ties may more effective for consumers with a shopping demand to
judge the usefulness of a product involved in C2C communications. The TS (Tie
Strength) exerts an impact on the effectiveness of word-of-mouth communications in
the online context [41]. The individual-level tie strength is an important antecedent of
PD in online peer communications [42]. The present study proposes that TS has a
positive impact on the PUE at Facebook communications in Bangladesh. The
hypothesis 4 is shown as follows:
H4: TS is positively related to PUE.
In the online community contexts, consumers can choose to mainly communicate
with real or virtual relationships by participating in different communities [43]. A
study pointed out social ties play a different role in consumer decision making in
different communication contexts [44]. The strong ties information are more
influential in consumer decision making than that from weak ties in the context of
offline word of mouth (WOM) communications or C2C interaction [45]. Real
interpersonal relationships among members are likely to be stronger and more stable
than those virtual relationships among members in online communities. Similarly, the
present study proposed that the influence of TS on the PUE is stronger when
consumers mainly communicate with virtual consumer relationships at Facebook
communities. The hypothesis is shown as follows:

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What have the authors contributed in "Modeling the role of c2c information quality on purchase decision in facebook" ?

This investigation develops a research model for online communities of Facebook commerce ( F-Commerce ) in Bangladesh region, which is based on Information Adoption Model ( IAM ). This study exhibits a model to influences of C2C communication on Bangladeshi consumers ’ purchase decision in the online communities of F-Commerce. This survey data has been taken from the Bangladesh Facebook users and strongly involved in product buy-sell at F-Commerce. Theoretical and executive implications are discussed for constructing their proposed model. 

Q2. What future works have the authors mentioned in the paper "Modeling the role of c2c information quality on purchase decision in facebook" ?

Although the findings provide meaningful implications, future studies should address several limitations. The future study will be conducted on more features for better understanding. Further study could add other cues. 

Q3. What scale approach have been used for measuring the theoretical concepts?

Likert scale approach [48] have used for ranging from “1 = strongly disagree” to “7 = strongly agree”, that presented with the set of attributes to measure the theoretical concepts. 

Q4. What is the main purpose of the article?

With the benefit of friend recommendations, widespread sharing and dynamic responses, Facebook become one of the most powerful tool for today’s’ social networking based ecommerce. 

Q5. What are the key web applications to access the various visitors in rapid time?

Due to the growing amount web traffic, the social network sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Friendster, CyWorld and MySpace are the crucial web applications to access the various visitors in rapid time now a day. 

Q6. How did the researchers assess the structural model?

To assess the structural model (Structural equation modeling) [54] suggested looking at the path coefficients (p), effect sizes (f 2 ), beta (β) and the corresponding t-statistic [55] via a bootstrapping procedure with a resample of various data or information. 

Q7. What is the importance of trust in the social media survey?

The social media survey of consumer has shown that trust is more usefulness to make the intention of consumers to purchase through social networking sites [23]. 

Q8. What is the second hypothesis of the study?

Their second hypothesis H2 implies that if consumers enjoy being on the social network or if they enjoy helping other consumers then they are motivated to post knowledge related data on Facebook. 

Q9. What is the name of the company that collects the statistics?

Under the statistics collected by Alexa,which is a web traffic data analytics company, Facebook obtained the third rank of the most viewed websites in 2018 after Google and YouTube [2].