Mothers’ Continuance Usage Intention of a Pregnancy and Parenting Community E-Commerce Platform : Platform Gratifications and Mother Characteristics

China’s recent shift to a two-child policy has important implications for the mother and baby industry in China. E-commerce platforms of pregnancy and parenting are likely to see substantial growth in the coming years. This paper looks at mothers’ intention to continue using a community e-commerce platform of pregnancy and parenting. A community e-commerce platform is one which combines both social interaction and business transaction functionality in the one e-commerce website. Drawing upon uses and gratifications theory, we develop a theoretical model to explain the joint effects of content, social and self-presentation gratifications, and mother characteristics on their intention to continue using a community e-commerce platform of pregnancy and parenting. The model was tested using survey data from Babytree.com, a popular community e-commerce platform of pregnancy and parenting in China. Our findings suggest that platform usefulness, social interaction and self-presentation positively influence a mothers’ intention to continue using a community e-commerce platform of pregnancy and parenting. Interestingly, we find a negative interaction effect of the number of children on mothers’ continuance usage intention. These findings enrich our understanding of mothers’ continuance usage intention of a community e-commerce platform of pregnancy and parenting and should be of interest to information systems researchers as well as practitioners who want to further develop their community e-commerce platforms