Establishing Trust in Social Commerce through Social Word of Mouth

Social commerce, a new stream in e-commerce, enables hyper-informed consumers to support the businesses in new product development. Hyper-informed consumers are the results of online communication provided by social media. These consumers have been empowered by Web 2.0 technologies to have online communication, which drives value for the companies in new product development. Trust is one the values that might be provided by the online communication of individuals through sharing the knowledge and experience of a new product. The paper sheds on new product development and trust concepts along with social commerce construct theory in order to develop a research model for investigating the impact of online communication of consumers, which produce social word of mouth on trust building mechanisms. The results from a survey reveal that social word of mouth, offered by social media, increases the level of trust on new products. The conclusion, discussion, and future research suggestion in the end of the paper support its contribution to the track of marketing and innovation.