Social presence model for e-commerce

Abstract

E-commerce is a system whereby consumers can buy goods and services from merchants who sell on the internet. E-commerce is more impersonal, anonymous and automated than traditional person-to-person commerce, and as such, typically lacks human warmth and sociability. This paper explores how human warmth and sociability can be integrated through the website interface to positively impact consumer attitude towards online shopping. In first section, website content analysis was used to investigate elements that offer many unique features to support the implementation of social presence through the e-commerce website interface. The second section seeks to determine relationships between elements of social presence, intention to use e-commerce and consumer attitude. A 5-level Likert scale questionnaire was used to determine consumer attitude towards online shopping and 50 respondents were selected. Pearson’s correlation was used to assess the relationship between social presence elements, intention to use e-commerce and consumer attitude. The result shows all positive relationships. The findings showed moderate relationship between social presence and intention to use e-commerce, a moderate relationship between intention to use e-commerce and consumer attitudes, and a weak relationship between social presence and consumer attitude.