Self Service Technologies and e Services Risks in Social Commerce Era
AbstractSocial commerce as a subset of e commerce has been emerged in part due to the popularity of social networking sites. Social commerce brings new challenges to marketing activities. And social commerce transactions like e commerce transactions can be dangerous and cause harmful losses to personal finances, time, and information privacy. This article examines ethical issues and consumer assessments of the risks of using an e service and how risk affects consumer evaluations and usage of Internet based services and self service technologies. Results from two surveys totaling 1024 consumers indicated that as usage risk concerns increased, the perceived usefulness (PU) of an e service and intention to use it decreased. Additionally as usage risk concerns increased the effect of subjective norm on PU and intention to use an e service strengthened, and the effect of perceived ease of use on PU and intention to use an e service weakened. These findings advance theory and contribute to the foundation for future research aimed at improving our understanding of how consumers evaluate new e services, new commerce systems and settings, and self service technologies in the social commerce era.