Integrating Social Networking Sites into e-Commerce Website: A Study on Online Consumer Behaviour

The high interactivity rate in social networking sites (SNSs) has drawn the attention of many researchers and businesses. However, this has at the same time made it difficult for businesses to decide where to build their web presence - in their e-commerce website or in SNSs. Therefore, this project, embracing the methodology of rapid application development (RAD), aims to study the impact on the online consumers’ behaviour, particularly in their perceived trust, word-of-mouth (WOM) effect among them, and their purchase intention in the e-commerce website, by integrating Facebook social elements into the website interface of an e-commerce website, ToHerHeart.com. A research online survey was developed and distributed before and after this integration. The research outcome shows that the positive impact of this social integration was generally not significant to accept the project hypotheses; integrating Facebook social elements into ToHerHeart.com e-commerce website interface does not really increase the online consumers’ perceived trust, WOM effect among them, and their purchase intention in ToHerHeart.com. The research outcome also suggests that businesses build their e-commerce website and at the same time set up their business webpage in SNSs to optimize the business advantages of both and minimize the overall disadvantages. Recommendations for future research were also outlined in this paper.