original work

Literature review and theoretical framework

However, most of the past studies have endeavored to explore the relationships between specific antecedent variables and switching behavior, as well as the roles of such variables, for example, direct role, moderating role, or mediating role.

There are several studies which explored the factors of consumers’ switching behavior, like perceived justice. Moon (1995) integrated “moorings” into the PPM, which may inhibit or facilitate an individual for migration. While the mooring effect reveals the impact of personal conditions within the online shopping context. Several variables have been explored in previous research on switching behavior using the PPM framework. While this study endeavors to comprehend customers’ switching between social commerce sites, its research framework considers the distinct features of social commerce sites to define the push and pull factors. Therefore, push strategy to reflect the negative/restricting properties of social commerce sites, and the limitations of social commerce sites may increase consumers’ switching intention. This study considers personal factors of the individual as mooring factors because user-specific factors may hinder or encourage switching behavior.

Push effect

Furthermore, Bitner (1990) explained customers compare the degree of service performance and their service expectation with regard to the service attributes, and the breach between these two becomes the perceived service quality. For example, a customer who evaluates e-service quality as high illustrates the intention of positive behavior; By contrast, a customer who evaluates e-service quality as low shows a tendency to select the alterative rather than to repurchase in the next consumer choice situation (Ha and Jang, 2013). Keaveney (1995) also explained three factors of failures in the core service, service encounter failures, and employees' responses to such service failures affected customer switching behavior. The term satisfaction is also used extensively in the switching literature. In the switching literature, the term satisfaction is also used extensively. Satisfaction signifies emotional status after exposure to the service or good the company has provided, while service quality is the customer's judgment of the service performance provided by the company and can be controlled by the provider. In addition, unsatisfied customers show greater switching intention than satisfied customers, and if a customer is not satisfied, he/she will actively seek alternatives (Han et al., 2011). High efficiency of transaction increases the attachment of consumers to an online website while low efficiency may encourage switching intention.

Pull effects

Mooring effects

As customers have dissimilar views of shopping, dissimilar experiences lead to different online shopping behaviors (Kim et al., 2012). Consumer experience of online shopping and associated activities refers to personal experience. Experience leads to a reduction in perceived risks related to online shopping (Ye et al., 2008). Specifically, experienced online consumers have self-reliance in online shopping due to the learning process. Liu et al. (2016) proposed that gamers who possess richer information about different games are more likely to find better games and are able to start new games effectively. Likewise, experienced customers have self-reliance in their capability to distinguish the differences between shopping channels. Well experienced consumers tell others about their shopping experiences on social networking sites. Individual characteristics (e.g., experience) have been found to influence switching behavior (Ye et al., 2008; O. Pappas et al., 2014; Jung et al., 2017). Therefore, a consumer with numerous online shopping experiences tends to switch from one social commerce site to another.

Moderating roles of mooring factors on consumers’ switching intention

Therefore, this study focuses on the assumption that mooring variables moderate the relationship between the push factors and intention of switching as well as between pull factors and switching intention. As suggested by Kang and Johnson (2013), in social networking sites, conformity motivation relates positively to opinion seeking. More specifically, when customers possess conformity motivation, the effects of low service quality, low satisfaction and low efficiency on intention to switch from one social commerce site to another would be strengthened. Consumers may follow the opinion of the majority in pursuit of a right decision. Goncalo and Duguid (2012)argued that groups may agree because people believe that the opinion of majority is accurate. Therefore, high-level conformist consumers are likely to follow the opinions of others. Which social commerce site provides a better opportunity for social interactions, a consumer with a high level of conformity may believe that the opinion of the majority is accurate and thus tends to switch from one social commerce site to another. Social commerce focuses on the impact of social influences that shape interactions among consumers (Kim and Srivastava, 2007). In the social commerce environment, consumers use social networking sites for communicating and interacting with friends, and they are thus inevitably influenced by them. In other words, when consumers are motivated by conformity, the effects of alternative attractiveness, social support and social benefit, on intention to switch from one social commerce site to another would be strengthened. Campo and Breugelmans (2015) proposed that experience support an individual to acquire choice-related knowledge through a learning process. When experienced consumers notice a website with poor service quality, low satisfaction and low transaction efficiency, they may rely on their knowledge to find an alternative. A social commerce site with low service quality, low satisfaction and low transaction efficiently drives consumers to switch. Therefore, personal experience enhances the impacts of push factors on the switching intention from one social commerce site to another. Experienced consumers have choice-related knowledge (Campo and Breugelmans, 2015) and have confidence in making decisions on their own, instead of soliciting information from others. Specifically, an experienced person may rely on his or her choice-related knowledge, rather than on social knowledge available from social commerce sites. Consequently, personal experience may weaken the positive impacts of pull factors, including alternative attractiveness, social support and social benefit on the intention to switch from one social commerce site to another.

Measurement model

The measurement model was examined in terms of convergent validity and discriminant validity. To assess the convergent validity, we used three primary measures (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Chin, 1998): (1) the factor loadings of the indicators, with value > 0.7; (2) composite reliability (CR), with value > 0.7; and (3) average variance extracted (AVE) estimates, with value > 0.5. CR refers to the internal consistency of the indicators measuring the given construct, while AVE indicates the amount of variance captured by a construct, as compared to the variance caused by measurement error (Chin, 1998). Based on these three criteria, the measurement model exhibited adequate convergent validity (see Table 3). Discriminant validity was evaluated by checking if the square root of the AVE for each construct was greater than the correlations between that construct and all other constructs (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Chin, 1998). Table 4 below presents the correlation matrix of the constructs and the square root of the AVE for each construct, which demonstrates the satisfactory discriminant validity of the measurement. We also performed two statistical analyses to assess the degree of common method bias. At the first stage we followed Podsakoff and Organ (1986), we used Harman’s single factor test to examine the effect of bias. The results revealed that the most significant factor explained only 27.067% of the variance, indicating that no single factor explained most of the variance.

Moderation analysis results

To explore the moderating role of the mooring effects on the relationship of switching intention with the push effect and with the pull effects, For the current study, we followed the procedure used by Keil et al. (2000). Specifically, for this study, whether estimates of the same path obtained from the two groups (high and low) of mooring factors differed significantly was tested. Table 5 lists the significance levels of the differences on high and low conformity for the estimated paths. The last column of Table 5 shows the significance levels of the differences. Conformity was found to moderate the effects of low service quality. Table 6 represents the significance levels of the differences on the high and low levels of personal experience for the path estimates. The R2 value of switching intention was 0.425 for the people in the group with a high level of personal experience, whereas it was 0.595 for their low-level counterparts. Thus, H11 was supported and H12 was partially supported by the results.

Research recommendations and implications

Liang et al. (2011/2012) explained that receiving support from other members increases consumer intentions of using that social commerce sites. Li et al. (2013) stated that a feeling of closeness and familiarity has positive effects on the intention to purchase in current social commerce environments and the availability of attractive alternatives have a significant effect on the switching intention. Third, when consumers are likely to switch from one social commerce to another, they have actual switching behavior. This finding is line with the TAM (Davis, 1989), the unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (Venkatesh et al., 2003), and the expectation–confirmation model (Bhattacherjee, 2001). However, there is stronger conformity entails a stronger relationship between low e-service quality, low satisfaction and low efficiency and switching intention and between pull variables, including attractive alternatives and social benefit, and intention of switching from social commerce another social commerce site. These outcomes are consistent with those reported in previous studies. However, conformity does not moderate the positive effects of social support on switching intention. The reason may be related to the support of the self-being contextual, as based on a specific setting and an anticipated outcome (Jensen Schau and Gilly, 2003). Therefore, conformity does not determine the influence of social support on switching intention. Lastly, consumers experience not only has a direct influence on switching intention but also has moderating effects for low e-service quality, low satisfaction, low transaction efficiency, attractive alternatives and social benefit on switching intention. The current findings are in line with numerous previous studies including Kim et al. (2012) and Ye et al. (2008), they had concluded that the different experiences of consumers with online shopping led to dissimilar behavior. However, when one social commerce site cannot provide e-service quality, satisfaction and efficient transactions, expert consumers may choose to switch to the other social commerce sites. Campo and Breugelmans (2015) stated that the consumer experience to manage their expectations and facilitate the transition to the new store environment. In contrast inexperienced consumers, they establish personal identity and mostly switch from one commerce site to another. These findings are in line with those obtained by Ye et al. (2008), his conclusion was, and more experienced consumer reduces uncertainties and perceived risk when shopping online.

Theoretical implications

In addition, the framework of PPM has been employed in numerous research contexts, such as when investigating mortgages. By applying the PPM framework (Boyle, 1998), this study empirically investigated the factors that affect consumers who switch from one social commerce to another to understand the PPM factors. Numerous studies confirm that switching intention is influence by general push, pull, and mooring effects that explain switching intention, more specific and actionable constituent factors for these three forces are required in this research context (Xu et al., 2014).

These findings imply that every type of social commerce site has advantages and disadvantages. Specifically, the decision of utilizing social commerce destinations might be founded on item type. Transaction efficiency, e-service quality and satisfaction can be achieved by providing quick and advanced searches, customized applications, fast retrieval of information, scheduling deliveries, product catalogues, one-click purchases, efficiency, fulfillment, reliability, responsiveness, contact, and product recommendations. Thus, online retailers should comprehend their association's market position, item types, and purchaser inclinations to decide the characteristics of the sites and augment buyer esteem.