Examining consumer adoption of social commerce: An extended META-UTAUT model

Social commerce has evolved into a mainstream channel for marketers and businesses for selling products online. However, consumers in many developing economies have yet to fully adopt social commerce technology. This research, therefore, aims to develop and empirically validate a conceptual model for understanding the factors influencing consumer adoption of social commerce in Bangladesh using an adapted and extended version of the Meta-UTAUT model. Analysis was undertaken to determine the appropriateness of external constructs such as trust, social support, anxiety, grievance redressal, innovativeness, and continuous participation intention. This research collected data from 402 social commerce users from Bangladesh to test and validate the proposed research model. The results suggest that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, innovativeness and trust have a direct influence on consumer attitude, whilst social influence, grievance redressal, facilitating conditions, social support, anxiety, and attitude, significantly influence usage behavior. The results also found that usage behavior is a strong predictor of continuous participation intention. This research contributes to existing knowledge by conceptualizing and validating a technology adoption model, which emphasizes the role of anxiety and grievance redressal in consumer acceptance of social commerce. • Social commerce adoption in Bangladesh is analyzed using an extended Meta-UTAUT model. • External factors examined include trust, anxiety, social support, innovativeness, and grievance handling. • The study highlights the role of anxiety and grievance redressal in consumer technology acceptance. • Usage behavior is a strong predictor of continuous participation in social commerce.