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.

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Dec 10th, 12:00 AM

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.