The Effect of Visual Influencer Marketing on Social Commerce Engagement: A Multi-Variable Approach

The concept of social commerce initially appeared in 2005 via Yahoo! (Rubel, 2005). On November 11 of the same year, Yahoo! launched Shoposphere, one of the first forays into this idea (Rothberg, 2005). The site included a “Pick Lists” feature that enabled consumers to express opinions, comment on products, and give feedback, creating an extra enticing and network-based purchasing experience. The availability of user-generated content rendered Shoposphere a blog-like look, further increasing consumer engagement (Rothberg, 2005). In addition, social commerce has contributed greatly in bringing in new customers into online markets. Social media integration has facilitated peer-to-peer sharing, which is now a prominent trend, allowing companies like Uber and Airbnb producing very large amounts of user- generated content (Stephen & Toubia, 2010). This change is referred to as a shift towards a multi-user e-commerce system by Yamakami (2015), whereby interactions beyond company- consumer relationships are extended to highlight collaboration and online purchasing with social interaction. Therefore, social trading is a sort of trade that takes place online and offline through media with social purposes (C. Wang and Zhang 2012).