Descripción de las categorías y propiedades

The phenomena arising from the popularity of using social networking sites (SNSs) for business purposes has brought about the development of a novel form of e- commerce known as social commerce (s-commerce) and specifically, if it is conducted through the Facebook platform, the term “Facebook commerce” (f-commerce)” is used. Currently there are several definitions for f-commerce. Shin (2013) defined f- commerce as a subgroup of s-commerce that utilizes Facebook, a social network service that supports user contributions and social interaction, to support online selling and buying of services and products. However, Chen et al. (2014) referred f-commerce as commercial and business activities using Facebook to support social interactions and promote consumer contributions in facilitating online business transactions. In addition, Menon et al. (2016, p. 1) opined that f-commerce is “a form of social commerce that uses Facebook as a platform to facilitate and execute sales transactions”. According to Market Business News (2017), f-commerce is a term used in the online

business world that focuses on developing and designing storefront sites and content within the Facebook social networking site i.e. selling services and goods within Facebook.com. On the other hand, Technopedia (2017) perceived f-commerce as e- commerce that is supported by the Facebook and transactions may happen on a Facebook page or by using Facebook Open Graph (i.e. a tool for blending third-party websites with Facebook). Last but not least, Gartner (2017) defined f-commerce as the retail transaction capability provided within the Facebook that is facilitated through application of Facebook APIs to enable the retailers to show products, information and deals to consumers while allowing consumers to complete transactions within Facebook. Hence, in this study, f-commerce is defined as a subset of social commerce in which business and commercial activities are performed using Facebook to support online selling and buying of products and services whereby transactions can be done on the Facebook page or by using third-party websites.

This revolutionary advancement in online business setting has further broadened the consumer markets by tapping into the huge population of the social media users. From marketing perspective, the focus of e-commerce is to maximize shopping efficiency by offering product catalogues, advanced search, product recommendations and one-click purchasing while f-commerce focuses on direct social activities like networking, collaboration and sharing with a secondary focus on online shopping (Huang & Benyoucef, 2013). In terms of consumer control, in e-commerce, consumers normally interact exclusively with the e-commerce websites independent from other consumers and have limited or no control as messages and exchanges are controlled by the companies. However, in f-commerce that engages real time involvement, consumers are empowered with control and hence reducing the distance between companies and the consumers (Constantinides and Fountain, 2008) since their preferences and

decisions not only rely on information provided by the companies but also the user generated content (UGC) by other consumers which carries its own economical value to companies (Hajli, 2015; Hajli & Sims, 2015).

From the context of system interaction, e-commerce normally offers one-directional browsing as user’s information is seldom shared with other consumers. Unlike e- commerce, f-commerce provides a more interactive social collaborative online experience as collective intelligence will be accumulated and employed to assist other consumers in their purchase decision making process. Essentially, the value added by the consumers will be strengthened tremendously via the collaborative efforts of the consumer networks in Facebook that ultimately lead to better decision making. Consumers’ recommendations, referrals and conversations occur within f-commerce will create huge impact compared to the conventional marketing messages.

The enormous growth of Facebook for the past decade can be attributed to social interaction which leads to word-of-mouth marketing, social capital building and advocacy of product brand (Jin, 2013). Companies are utilizing Facebook for various purposes which include community building to generate conversations and increase fan base; for marketing and promotion to increase awareness of upcoming events or sales; and also for advertising to increase brand awareness. According to Ng (2013), f- commerce can be categorized into two groups (Please refer to Appendix B). The first group refers to firms that connect to Facebook with fan pages and apps which bring prospective consumers to their online-shops (e.g. Gap, TripAdvisor, Levis, Mazda, Amazon, etc). The second group refers to firms that link to Facebook via fan pages and apps and enable potential consumers to purchase straight from their Facebook stores (e.g. Watson Malaysia, Groupon USA, Pantene North America, Hallmark and etc). For

these firms, the main goal is to use Facebook for consumer engagement, special offer promotions and to foster more social interactions among consumers and their friends.

Renowned retailers like Macy’s, Express, Hallmark and Delta have started to sell their products via Facebook pages that enable consumers to purchase products within their Facebook page and news feed while interacting and sharing product information (Kang and Johnson, 2015). Moreover Soldsie, the social shopping service also allows sellers to upload their product photo images, available quantities and prices on Instagram and Facebook (Cohen, 2014). Consumers will be able to comment with the tag “sold” and the bought items can be included into their virtual shopping carts before

they finalize the transactions. Likewise, the Shopify Facebook store app also provides the service for sellers to trade their goods via Facebook directly. According to Tsukayama (2015), the Facebook Messenger app has also allowed buyers to query company’s extra product information and obtain swift responses, make extra orders and get online order confirmation via the Messenger accounts. Another app, TheFind is able to discover and extract buyers’ social profiles and purchase habits to facilitate a custom-made purchasing experience (Koh, 2015). With the “buy” button, sellers will be able to sell their products within Facebook ads. When sellers upload an update of the novel product, buyers will be able to receive notifications on the updates and can proceed to buy it with just a simple click of the button that will bring them to the credit card payment interface. Hence, it can be concluded that f-commerce has further revolutionalized e-retailing, e-marketing, e-advertising and e-commerce on the whole.