Antecedents and Outcomes of Social Commerce Information Sharing in China: From Multi-medium Marketing to Consumer Behaviour

Abstract

An increase in people’s use of social media networking sites has changed their perceptions of communications and marketing. This study investigates the effects of social media and broadcast marketing (BM) of higher education institutions (HEIs) in China on intention to buy (IB) and word-of-mouth (WOM). Given that social media marketing (SMM) has become an emerging topic for study, HEIs are currently shifting towards digital marketing approaches to create intentions amongst people. Furthermore, the concept of social commerce information sharing (SCIS), which is an enhanced version of e-commerce, had been studied to determine how it creates intention among parents and students to opt the particular institution that use SMM and BM for admission. The current study follows the quantitative research method to test the relationship between variables. Data were collected in China using structural equation modelling. Results showed that SMM and BM significantly affects IB and WOM, whereas SCIS significantly mediates the relationship.

Keywords: social media marketing; broadcast marketing; word-of-mouth; behavioural intentions; higher education institutions