Consumers increasingly search for, evaluate, and buy items via social media and websites, but little is known about how these activities affect their level of trust, attitudes toward online retailing, and online shopping behaviors. Therefore, this study focuses on how online shopping via Facebook, peer recommendations, and website service quality affect consumer trust, attitudes and loyalty intentions in e-tailing. An online survey was conducted with Generation Y Italian consumers who used Facebook searches of various websites to shop for clothing online. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the constructs, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to test the hypotheses. Findings confirm that website service quality and consumers' predispositions to use Facebook for online shopping directly and positively affect consumer trust towards an e-tailer. In contrast, peer recommendations affect attitude directly rather than indirectly via trust. The results further indicate that peer recommendations have a significantly stronger influence on attitudes of females than they do on attitudes of males.
Highlights:We study consumers' engagement online through websites and social networking sites and related peer recommendations.Data has been collected from Generation Y consumer segments who shop online.Online shopping via Facebook and website service quality has positive effect on trust.Peer recommendations have a significantly stronger influence on attitudes of females than they do on attitudes of males.Trust has a positive and significant effect on attitude towards e-tailer and loyalty intentions.
Consumers' participation on sharing economy platforms is crucial for the success of the products, services, and companies on those platforms. The participation of consumers enables companies to not only exist, but also to create value for consumers. The sharing economy has witnessed enormous growth in recent years and consumers' concerns regarding the ethics surrounding these platforms have also risen considerably. The vast majority of the previous research on this topic is either conceptual and focused on organizational aspects, or only discusses privacy and security issues, thus providing a very limited scope of discussion. Therefore, drawing on the marketing and business ethics literature, the present study takes into account a multidimensional view of ethical issues surrounding consumers' participation on sharing economy platforms. Findings reveal that privacy, security, shared value, fulfillment/reliability and service recovery are the strongest determinants of consumers' ethical perceptions. These aspects strongly predict the consumers' value co-creation intentions. Consumers' participation also predicts their intention to engage in co-creating value, but this effect is stronger with the mediating role of the consumer's ethical perceptions. The theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed.
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