Start Date
10-12-2017 12:00 AM
Description
We conducted a randomized field experiment in collaboration with a large e-commerce platform in the US to examine the impact of social media integration (in the form of a Facebook comment system) on users' shopping behaviors (e.g., adding a product to cart, placing an order). Our results show that implementing a Facebook comment system leads to significantly increases in customers' likelihood of adding a product to cart (~6% increase) and placing an order (~10% increase). Further analyses on the heterogeneous treatment effects show evidence of social learning mechanism: the effect of a Facebook comment system on customer conversion is positive with many comments, yet is negative with few comments. Also, the positive effect of a Facebook comment system on user conversion is stronger for new customers than repeat customers. Lastly, we performed difference-in-difference (DID) analysis and found that Facebook comment system increases the demand for all products in the experiment.
Recommended Citation
Huang, Ni; Sun, Tianshu; Chen, Pei-yu; and Golden, Joseph M., "Social Media Integration and E-commerce Platform Performance: A Randomized Field Experiment" (2017). ICIS 2017 Proceedings. 4.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2017/EBusiness/Presentations/4
Social Media Integration and E-commerce Platform Performance: A Randomized Field Experiment
We conducted a randomized field experiment in collaboration with a large e-commerce platform in the US to examine the impact of social media integration (in the form of a Facebook comment system) on users' shopping behaviors (e.g., adding a product to cart, placing an order). Our results show that implementing a Facebook comment system leads to significantly increases in customers' likelihood of adding a product to cart (~6% increase) and placing an order (~10% increase). Further analyses on the heterogeneous treatment effects show evidence of social learning mechanism: the effect of a Facebook comment system on customer conversion is positive with many comments, yet is negative with few comments. Also, the positive effect of a Facebook comment system on user conversion is stronger for new customers than repeat customers. Lastly, we performed difference-in-difference (DID) analysis and found that Facebook comment system increases the demand for all products in the experiment.