Breaking the uncertainty barrier in social commerce: the relevance of seller and customer-based signals

Abstract

Even though the problem of uncertainty in online business is widely discussed, there is still limited knowledge of the mechanisms used by social commerce customers to reduce uncertainty perception. Therefore, this study attempts to bridge this gap by investigating the influence of the number of positive review comments, seller popularity, customer service quality, and return policy on seller uncertainty. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The empirical evidence from 155 social commerce customers shows that the number of positive review comments, seller popularity, and customer service quality has a negative influence on seller uncertainty. Moreover, customer service quality enhances the negative influence of the number of positive review comments on seller uncertainty. Furthermore, the study revealed that the seller that offers a lenient return policy in addition to good customer service quality experiences lower levels of seller uncertainty than the seller that only offers good customer service.