Understanding Consumers’ Switching Intention from e-Commerce to Social Commerce: A Mixed Methods Study

As firms continue to use social media checkout and shopping integrations, and social media platforms become primary search engines for consumers, social commerce is slowly replacing traditional e-commerce. However, there is still a limited understanding of why consumers frequently switch between e-commerce and social commerce platforms during the process by which they discover and purchase a product. This study attempts to bridge this gap by investigating the switching behavior from traditional e-commerce to social commerce at the consumer level. By following a mixed-methods approach, this study develops and empirically validates a research model derived using the push–pull–mooring framework and the findings of the exploratory study. The test results showed that the proposed research model explains a large portion (0.607%) of the variance in consumers’ switching intentions. Besides, social influence was also found to moderate the impact of push and pull factors on switching intention.