Customer engagement in social commerce: A theoretical review

Social commerce (s-commerce) has changed both businesses and customers. The role of customer has dramatically changed with the rapid growth of s-commerce. Customer engagement behavior in the s-commerce context has become a key competitive advantage for companies that aim to build a customer-centric business and utilize the power of social media. Numerous studies have conducted to understand the customer behavior to engage in s-commerce, but little effort have been made to incorporate the previous studies to provide theoretical foundation of customer engagement in s-commerce context. The aim of this study is to identify the well utilized theories and factors that influence customer engagement behavior in s-commerce. The study used a systematic Literature Review (SLR) as a method to identify and analyze the theories and factors related to customer engagement. The results shows that the theories which constitute the foundation of customer engagement studies can be classified into: social related theories, technological related theories, behavioral theories and motivational theories, and most of the well utilized factors are tapped under theses classifications. This study provides a comprehensive view of the theoretical foundation of customer engagement studies in s-commerce, and provide theoretical basis for IS research towards the development of empirical research on customer engagement and s-commerce.