The Impact of Situational Factor on Social Selling Intention in e-Marketing with the Mediating Effect of Self-Efficacy

Businesses are influenced by external factors uninterruptedly which may in turn force their business transformation strategies upon the situations faced.The adverse effects of Covid-19 pandemic have made social media an essential business tool with the increasing number of social media users.Consumers are now more informed, connected, and empowered with easier access to social media platforms.Therefore, this study aims to examine the role of situational factors (i.e., economic condition, transformation of technology, and customer engagement in social media) that influence the social selling behaviour of social sellers in the Malaysian context.Despite the high level of social selling activities in Malaysia, no conclusive evidence has shown the relationship between situational factors, self-efficacy, and social selling intention.Therefore, this study seeks to fill these gaps with the application of Theory of Planned Behaviour to capture the behavioural intention of social sellers toward social selling activities.A total of 504 sets of questionnaires were collected and used for analysis using the partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) approach.The findings demonstrated that the transformation of technology and customer engagement in social media were significantly related to social selling intentions.Interestingly, it was found that self-efficacy acted as the mediator in the relationship between economic condition and customer engagement in social media on social selling intention.Social selling intention was also found to affect social selling performance.The present study enhances the body of knowledge about the social selling intentions among Malaysians to serve as a resource for future researchers.