Advances in Social Commerce Research : Guest Editors’ Introduction

Social networking technologies have become one of the major innovations that have transformed e-commerce in recent years. Additionally, there is an increasing awareness that e-commerce and online social networks can mutually benefit each other to enhance their sustainability. Social commerce has attracted wide attention from both academia and industry. Nevertheless, many issues surrounding social commerce are not yet fully understood. One unique phenomenon is that social commerce research is progressing with and influencing social commerce practice due to easy market entry for new firms and readily accessible social media. In this Guest Editors’ Introduction, we will provide an overview of new research that we shaped into special issue on social commerce for Electronic Commerce Research and Applications. The research works that we will showcase in this issue – the second of two special issues we contributed – reflect a timely call to deepen our understanding of social commerce in different ways