Fashioning consumer choices: recommendation, motivation, and purchase intention toward Instagram commerce. A mediation analysis

Abstract

Social commerce, such as Instagram shopping – an innovative, global platform on which businesses offer their products and services – is attracting growing interest from both the academic community and the business world. Not least, this interest is due to the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic, with its associated restrictions on movement, prompted an upsurge in worldwide demand for social commerce. This study aims to determine whether consumer motivation mediates the association between recommendation and purchase intention toward Instagram commerce. Employing a mediation analysis, the work identifies consumer buying patterns on this platform by conducting a cross-sectional study on a sample comprising experienced Spanish Instagram users. This research provides valuable insights into the adoption of Instagram commerce, with implications for practitioners in the field of social commerce, especially in the Fashion context. The findings suggest that powerful recommendations will increase online shoppers’ motivation to make purchases via this social network rather than other social commerce platforms.