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1. Introduction
Social media is any form of online publication or presence that allows interactive communication, including, but not limited to, social networks, blogs, internet websites, internet forums and wikis (NYC, 2012). The use of social media sites is gradually increasing and, over the past few years, social networking has attracted people in such a way that it has become a daily part of their daily lives (Gayathri et al., 2012). The internet users in the USA in 2012, 71 per cent of women used social media sites in comparison to 61 per cent men, while 86 per cent of 18-29 year-old individuals used these social media sites and 72 per cent were in 30-49 age group (Brenner, 2012). Social media is used by a majority of traditional age college students in the USA within a range of 86 (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2011) to 95 per cent (Sago, 2010).
Social media represents one of the most important platforms for electronic commerce (e-commerce) and amplifies the ability for communication with large numbers of consumers – be it organization to consumers or consumer to consumers (Mangold and Faulds, 2009; Sago, 2010; Evans, 2012). It has one of the most metamorphic impacts on business (Aral et al., 2013) and remarkably revolutionize the way the consumers and organizations interact (Todri and Adamopoulos, 2014). Social media tools provide improved communication and collaboration between firms and their stakeholders (e.g. customers, suppliers, business partners) (Burke et al., 2010; Culnan et al., 2010), an innovative way for firms to identify products with high selling potentials (Liang and Turban, 2011), and a better channel for attracting and retaining online customers (IBM, 2009). The increased acceptance of social media has given rise to social commerce (s-commerce/SC) due to the increased popularity of social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (Liang et al., 2011). S-commerce/SC is a new form of e-commerce that involves using social media that supports social interaction and consumer contribution to assist online buying and selling of products and services (Shen and Eder, 2011; Zhou et al., 2013).
Interactive and direct social media communication with customers, colleagues and business partners may provide an important impetus for companies (Oehri and Teufel, 2012)....