Critical Factors for Acceptance of Social Commerce: A Case Study in Oman

The study aims to assess the acceptance of social commerce and participate in social commerce amongst Omani people. The questions of the survey Instrument were prepared in English later converted into Arabic. The survey instrument was having two parts; the first part sought the demographic information like age, gender, education, occupation etc. The second part of the instrument was related to the variables, which was in 5-point Likert scale, where 5 means strongly agree while 1 meaning strongly disagree. The data was collected using online and offline surveys, making the number of the valid responses to 478. A conceptual model was developed using the following variables. The selected variables such as “Familiarity” (F), “Trust” (T), “Perceived usefulness” (PU), “Perceived ease of use” (PEU), “Intention to Purchase” (IP). The hypothesis was tested using structural equation modelling. The results indicate that all six hypotheses were supported. The F, T and PEU, and PU was found to be positive and significant related to intention to purchase (p-value 0.003, 0.001, 0.000. & 0.007). Amongst the four, p value of F was found to be the lowest and PU was found to be the highest. This indicate F was strong indicator of IP as compared to others. PUE relates to PU, and F was related to IP.