| The increased popularity of social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, has made social commerce a new business model for e-commerce. Social commerce is a combination of social media and online shopping in which the online interactions and contributions of consumers to assist in the acquisition of products and services are supported by Web 2.0 social media technologies and infrastructures. Because of the enormous business potential of social commerce, many companies have initiated social commerce projects. Social commerce has not only provided huge opportunities for marketing practitioners but also opened a rich research territory for scholars. Social commerce can become one of the most challenging research areas in the coming decades.As a new e-commerce model, social commerce has been investigated by few studies. Existing studies have primarily focused on using objective data to infer and generalize the influence of social commerce on consumers. However, several important outstanding issues about social commerce remain. Resolving these issues require the development of new theories. One of these issues relates to online impulse buying. Users of social commerce communities are prone to online impulse buying. However, little is known about the underlying processes and factors of this behavior. To fill the research gap, this study investigates the factors that affect the tendency of users toward online impulse buying in social commerce communities. Specifically, the influence of parasocial interaction on the impulse buying tendency is examined.This study is theoretically based on several sources. The basic framework of the research is the stimulus-organism-response model, and the conceptual model is developed on the basis of literature on social commerce, impulse buying, and parasocial interaction. The model also integrates key constructs from literature on website quality and interpersonal interaction.The empirical research was conducted in Mogujie (www.mogujie.com), one of the most popular image-sharing social commerce communities in China. A message with a link to an online questionnaire was sent to the users of Mogujie through its mail system. A total of 248 usable questionnaires were collected in two weeks. The survey data were analyzed by Partial Least Squares. The measurement model was assessed, and the structural model was then evaluated.The relationships proposed in the research model are all supported. Users’perceived enjoyment with the community and parasocial interaction relationships with other users in the community significantly affects their impulse buying tendency. The task-relevant feature (i.e., information fit-to-task) and mood-relevant feature (i.e., visual appeal) of the community also positively affect users’perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment, respectively. Users’ parasocial interaction with other users is determined by the socially relevant features of social commerce communities (i.e., similarity, expertise, and likeability). Users’ perceived usefulness in the community and their parasocial interaction with other users also significantly affect theirperceived enjoyment. This study provides important theoretical and practical contributions. In terms of theory, this study is one of few theoretically guided empirical studies that investigate the impulse buying behavior of users in a social commerce community. The research model also integrates theories from several theoretical domains, ranging from information systems to media and communication, and thus supports the integration of cross-disciplinary studies into social commerce research.This research is one of the earliest studies to examine users’impulse buying behavior by using parasocial interaction theory. In terms of practice, the results of this study provide useful guidelines and insights for designers of social commerce communities and company marketers. This study also suffers some limitations all of which direct the future research.
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