The Effect of Social Media Apps on Shopping Apps

Abstract

Mobile shopping is on the rise, and the main channel of social media has now shifted from online to mobile. We aim to understand the role of social media apps in driving mobile shopping. Specifically, we examine two performance metrics for mobile shopping—shopping app stickiness and usage time—and classify social media apps into broadcasting and narrowcasting ones. Our empirical analyses using mobile panel data reveal that the usage time of both types of social media apps increases shopping app stickiness. As for shopping app usage time, broadcasting app usage time has a positive impact, while narrowcasting app usage time has a negative impact. We also find that the impact of broadcasting app usage is greater than that of narrowcasting app usage. Furthermore, offline social interactions weaken the effect of social media usage on shopping app stickiness and that of broadcasting app usage on shopping app usage time.