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gaining of gratifications of entertainment and social identification with the feature of quizzes but not information and self-presentation.
Lastly, least number of respondents (32.6%) have used the feature of live streams on the Taiwan Shopee app. And according to the results of the analysis, H4a, H4b, H4c, and H4d are all not supported, which indicates that none of the social marketplace aspects considered in the research have a significant influence on users’ satisfaction toward the online shopping platform. It is likely because that live stream is the most recent released feature on the app compared to the other five ones examined in this study, and it is not as fully developed and well known as the ones on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media. Both the e-commerce company and the store owners are still trying to attract consumers’ attention and encourage them to develop the habit of participating in the live streams on the app. Since the usage percentage of live streams is still relatively low, shopping app users are unable to obtain gratifications with the feature. As a result, when it comes to live streams, none of the examined gratifications in this study are found to have significant impacts on users’ satisfaction toward the online shopping platform.
5.2 Conclusions
The results of this research have provided different aspects of findings compared to previous studies. Most of the past studies had been focusing on users’ attitudes and intention of the whole e-commerce platforms rather than specific features. For instance, Huang (2008) found that users’ positive attitude generated by the gratifications of
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entertainment, perceived of usefulness, and perceived ease of use from the platform in general would lead to their satisfaction and usage intention. Scholars had also conducted researches based on gender differences in the past. For example, Rodgers and Harris (2003) came to the conclusion that emotion, trust, and convenience were three of the main concepts which predicted consumers’, especially women’s, satisfaction with their online shopping experiences. Moreover, several studies had pointed out the influences of the characteristics of social media on consumers’ attitudes and behaviors regarding to e-commerce platforms. For instance, Chung and Austria (2010) proposed that the gratifications obtained with the usage of social media marketing message would increase the online-shopping value for consumers. Hence, this study took the results above into consideration and shifted the focus to specific features and characteristics of the shopping app.
First of all, according to the results of this study, e-commerce apps should provide their consumers with a variety of social marketplace features to improve users’
stickiness. In this study, the results show that the feature of subscriptions could influence the gratification of information; the feature of chats could influence the gratifications of information, entertainment, and self-presentation; the feature of posts could influence the gratification of self-presentation; the feature of games could influence the gratifications of entertainment and social identification; and the feature of quizzes could influence the gratifications of entertainment and social identification.
That is to say, different features could provide consumers with different types of gratifications, which could further lead to users’ satisfaction with the online shopping
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platforms. Consequently, it is important for e-commerce business to include a suitable number of features with diverse characteristics in order for users to gain various kinds of gratification. And the gratifications of the four social marketplace aspects examined in this study are all found to significantly impact users’ satisfaction with the online shopping platforms. Furthermore, such satisfaction appears to have considerable influence on users’ stickiness to continue using the app.
Secondly, in this study, confirmation is found to have notable impacts on all the four examined user’s gratifications and satisfaction with the e-commerce platform. That is to say, when the actual experiences are as good as or even better than the expectations beforehand, users tend to gain more gratifications of the social marketplace aspects and find greater satisfactions with the apps. As a consequence, e-commerce business owners should be constantly maintaining and upgrading the service level and overall user experience of the apps to keep up with the expectations of their consumers.
Last but not least, businesses would have to advance the promotion and appeal of such features to further increase the engagement rate. According to the results from the 350 participants in this study, 91.1% of the respondents know the feature of subscriptions but only 76.9% of them have used it; 95.1% of the respondents know the feature of chats and 92% of them have used it; 66.6% of the respondents know the feature of posts but only 35.4% of them have used it; 78% of the respondents know the feature of games but only 56.6% of them have used it; 54.9% of the respondents know the feature of quizzes but only 37.1% of them have used it; and 78% of the respondents
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know the feature of live streams but only 32.6% of them have used it. Apparently, aside from the feature of chats which consumers would have more intention to use whenever they need to communicate with the sellers, there are significant gaps between the acknowledge percentages and the usage percentages of all the other features. Thus, it is crucial for online shopping businesses to increase the incentives and motivations for using such features to further improve users’ satisfaction and stickiness.