Gift giving via social network services: the case of a WeChat mini-program used in China

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine and explore the factors that drive users to gift through social network services (SNS). Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire method was applied to collect data from the sample of the WeChat users who have used mini-program. This paper employed the partial least squares method and used SmartPLS2.0 to analysis sample data, which examined the validity as well as reliability of the sample and further tested the hypotheses by the path coefficients. Findings The empirical results showed that pleasure, social relationship maintenance, convenience and comprehensiveness are significantly related to SNS gifting behavior, and conscientiousness moderates the relationship between intention and behavior in the context of SNS gifting. However, this study cannot find the effect of symbolic representation, impersonality and gift reciprocity motivations. Research limitations/implications Theoretically, this study perfects the research of SNS gifting on the lack of exploring characteristics of comprehensiveness. Practically, this paper lends insights on how SNS providers attract users to adopt gifting. Originality/value SNS gifting lacks a complete and effective promotion strategy, resulting in a small number of users as well as low profit. Besides, prior studies have focused on tradition gifting and online gifting. Little research talks about gifting on SNS phenomena, and thus it is necessary to perfect the theory of SNS gifting.