International Journal of Advertising

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Seller creative selling in social commerce

Li Chen, Fengxia Zhu, Murali Mantrala & Na Wang

To cite this article: Li Chen, Fengxia Zhu, Murali Mantrala & Na Wang (2020):
Seller creative selling in social commerce, International Journal of Advertising, DOI:
10.1080/02650487.2020.1755180

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2020.1755180

Published online: 23 Apr 2020.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING
https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2020.1755180

Seller creative selling in social commerce

Li Chena, Fengxia Zhub, Murali Mantralac and Na Wangd
a
Sawyer Business School, Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; bMonte Ahuja College of
Business, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA; cTrulaske College of Business, University
of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA; dBusiness School, HuaQiao University, QuanZhou, China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Social commerce has gained substantial attention from both Received 16 April 2019
academics and practitioners. Many studies aim to understand con- Accepted 7 April 2020
sumer behavior in social commerce. However, little attempt has
been made to investigate the social commerce phenomenon KEYWORDS
from the seller’s perspective. Focusing on sellers, this study Social commerce; seller
creative selling;
explores the drivers of seller creative selling and empirically tests e-commerce; domain-based
the effect of seller creative selling on seller business performance view of creativity
in social commerce settings. Using multi-sourced data, including
primary survey data and secondary trade volume data from a
large social commerce marketplace, the authors find that seller
creative selling significantly enhances seller business performance.
Further, community information support from other users on the
marketplace, and business support from the marketplace plat-
form, contribute to sellers’ creative selling behavior. In addition,
seller tenure with the marketplace weakens the positive relation-
ship between community information support and seller creative
selling. These findings highlight the key role of seller creative
selling for successful social commerce platforms and provide
guidance for nurturing seller creative selling by managers of
such websites.

Introduction
My designs would not have fallen into so many hands without Etsy’s wide reach.
Seeing what my peers are creating and selling has been a huge source of motivation
and inspiration, and hearing feedback from my customers is by far the most fulfilling
part of owning my business.

Erin berkowitz (seller of yellow house handmade on etsy)

Social media has dramatically changed how people communicate and conduct busi-
ness. It empowers consumers to actively share brand and product experiences, while
enabling sellers to leverage networks to gain information and generate revenue. Given
the popularity of social media and its applications, it is no surprise that practitioners

CONTACT Na Wang wangna1212@163.com Business School, HuaQiao University, QuanZhou, China.

ß 2020 Advertising Association
2 L. CHEN ET AL.

and scholars have become increasingly interested in deriving value from interactions
in online social networks (Boon, Pitt, and Salehi-Sangari 2015; Stephen and Toubia
2010). For example, social media networks (e.g., Facebook and Pinterest) have added
“buy” buttons and “store” functions to stimulate online transactions, while e-commerce
marketplaces (e.g., Etsy and Taobao) have embedded online social applications such
as instant messaging tools, forums, and chatrooms to encourage user interaction.
Accordingly, the merging of social media and commercial activities has led to the
emergence of “social commerce”, which has quickly become a trend likely to shape
future business models (Shin 2013; Stephen and Toubia 2010). In 2015 alone, internet
traffic to social commerce sites increased 198% (Hutchinson 2016). According to
eMarketer, social commerce revenue has grown from $5 billion in 2011 to $30 billion
in 2015, and this amount is predicted to grow by enormous margins in the next dec-
ade (Lazar 2016).
However, despite continuous efforts to promot social commerce, many online plat-
forms have not gained much from this online business trend. The lack of transaction
volumes has led some platforms to abandon social commerce. For example, Twitter
recently disbanded its entire social commerce team and shuttered its buy button
product (Meola 2016). Study suggests that the failure of social commerce platforms is
casued by consumers’ low interest in social buy functions (Marketing Charts 2016).
Based on this finding, many social commerce platforms have been investing in increas-
ing consumers’ awareness and usage of social commerce, such as making the buy but-
tons more visible and the transaction process easier to navigate. However, these
efforts to increase ‘conversion’ on social commerce sites appear to only concentrate
on the consumer’s perspective, and pay little attention to facilitating sellers, whose
role in social commerce is equally important (Stephen and Toubia 2010).
To reach a better understanding of seller behavior in social commerce is of great
value. For social commerce websites to be successful, it is critical to cater to both sel-
lers and buyers. A recent study has shown that sellers are 3.5 times more influential
than buyers in driving the growth of e-commerce marketplaces (Chu and Manchanda
2016). Therefore, discovering how to better support sellers (e.g., help sellers become
more creative in their online communication and selling activities) is critical for com-
panies who run social commerce platforms. Unfortunately, little guidance is available
to these platform companies about serving sellers and helping them achieve better
performance.
To fill this research gap, the major objective of this study is to investigate sellers’
creative selling behavior in social commerce. Specifically, we focus on individual sellers
and small business entrepreneurs. Our aim is to explore the drivers of seller creative
selling and to empirically test its effect on seller business performance in the social
commerce context. The contribution of this study is threefold:
First, we extend social commerce research by focusing on sellers. A complete
understanding of seller behavior is needed to enable a platform firm to improve and
increase its productivity (Yadav et al. 2013). In practice, managers of social commerce
websites are under pressure to groom the seller base to attract more buyers and to
sustain the growth of the platform. Achieving this objective calls for the platform to
do what it can to enhance seller effectiveness.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING 3

Second, we explore drivers and outcomes of seller creative selling— a seller’s gen-
eration of novel ideas and approaches in performing their online business activities,
such as: presenting and promoting products, communicating with customers, and
solving customer problems (Wang and Netemeyer 2004)— in social commerce
research. In internet-based media, due to potential information overload and the
absence of face-to-face interaction, creativity could be a key determinant of sellers’
success (Srinivasan, Anderson, and Ponnavolu 2002). Past research suggests that cus-
tomers tend to exhibit a low level of patience in an online environment (Dreze and
Zufryden 2004). In addition, the internet offers a platform for perfect competition
where information is easily obtainable and fierce price competition might be in order
(Brynjolfsson and Smith 2000). Therefore, sellers may need creative ways to attract and
keep customers to survive. While the importance of creative selling has been empha-
sized in existing literature, there is limited understanding of its drivers and perform-
ance implications in an online environment. This study contributes to the literature by
identifying two types of support that can improve seller creative selling and empiric-
ally test the effect of creative selling on seller performance in the social com-
merce context.
Third, we examine the moderating role of seller tenure in the relationship between
two types of support and seller creative selling. While it is common for social com-
merce platforms to provide various support services to aid sellers in developing novel
selling ideas and approaches, the effectiveness of these services may depend on differ-
ent types of sellers. Our findings offer valuable managerial guidance for online social
commerce platforms on how to better stimulate sellers’ generation and development
of creative selling actions based on their personal characteristics.
This paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we provide theoretical back-
ground for our research, including social commerce and domain-based view of creativ-
ity. We then discuss the scope of this study and introduce our hypotheses. The
approach to collect, model and analyze data to test the hypotheses are described
next, followed by a discussion of the research results and their managerial implica-
tions. We conclude with a summary of the major contributions and limitations of
the study.

Research background
Social commerce
The concept of social commerce originated in 2005 when Yahoo! Launched
Shoposphere which enabled users to comment on and review product list. Since then,
social commerce has been largely driven by practice rather than by research. On the
one hand, e-tailers realized the power of user-generated content and started to pro-
vide collaborative spaces and incorporate social tools for buyers to exchange informa-
tion. On the other hand, driven by the potential business value of online social
networks, social networking sites tapped into commercial functions to allow transac-
tions and advertisements. Facilitated by the development of technology, the range of
social commerce has expanded dramatically and become a global trend with vast
business potentials (Wang and Zhang 2012; Zhang and Benyoucef 2016).
4 L. CHEN ET AL.

While the definition of social commerce has evolved over time, recent research
appears to have reached consensus on a broad definition. Based on a comprehensive
and systematic review of social commerce research, Lin, Li, and Wang (2017) have pro-
vided a definition of social commerce as “any commercial activities facilitated by or
conducted through the broad social media and Web 2.0 tools in consumers’ online
shopping process or business interactions with their customers” (p. 191). In this study,
we adopt this definition for its comprehensive conceptualization of social commerce.
As to research themes in social commerce, most studies have focused on consumer
purchasing behavior in social commerce (e.g., Chu and Kim 2011; Hong and Pittman
2020; Lee and Youn 2019; Zhang and Benyoucef 2016). For example, Zhang and
Benyoucef (2016)’s review on consumer behavior in social commerce summarized the
impact of factors such as trust, loyalty and motivation, on customers’ decision-making
process, and Gibreel et al., (2018)’s study on the roles of social, technical, and socio-tech-
nical factors in buyers’ purchase intention in social commerce. However, social com-
merce is a user-driven, two-sided market in which users include both sellers and buyers.
Our review of social commerce literature yielded very few articles that looked at seller
behaviors. For example, Qu et al., (2013) investigated the implications of online social
activities for e-tailers’ business performance. Stephen and Toubia (2010) examined the
economic value of sellers’ social commerce networks and demonstrated that sellers can
enhance their business performance through connecting with other sellers. However, for
us to see a more complete picture of social commerce, more research on seller behavior
is necessary.

Seller creative selling

Selling tasks such as presenting products, interacting with customers, and tailoring sol-
utions to meet customer needs all require creative thinking (Wang and Netemeyer
2004). Creative selling refers to seller’s generation of novel ideas and approaches in
performing their online business activities such as presenting and promoting products,
communicating with customers, and solving customer problems (Wang and
Netemeyer 2004). While academics and practitioners generally agree on the import-
ance of creative selling, few studies explore factors that foster creativity in sales con-
text and address the linkage between engaging in a creative process and sales
performance (Groza, Locander, and Howlett 2016).
A domain-based view of creativity proposes that creativity should be domain spe-
cific (Agnihotri et al. 2014; Baer 2015; Ford and Gioia 2000). For example, a researcher
may be very creative in experiment design but would have little flair for designing
clothing, or a product engineer may come up with a breakthrough innovation but
would have no idea how to use novel ways to solve employee schedule conflict. In
addition, a domain-based view of creativity argues that creative actions require
domain-specific knowledge (e.g., Baer 2015). It is unlikely for a researcher to come up
with creative experiment designs without knowledge of that area and it is unlikely for
a product engineer to develop a breakthrough new product without expertise in
that industry. Therefore, creativity is inextricably rooted within specific domains and
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING 5

Figure 1. Focus of the study.

domain-specific knowledge is necessary for the generation of creative ideas and

actions (Baer 2015; Ford and Gioia 2000).
The domain of social commerce encompasses exchange-related activities that occur
before, during, and after a focal transaction (Yadav et al. 2013). For sellers, such activ-
ities include presenting and promoting products, communicating with customers, and
solving customer problems etc., to facilitate customers’ purchasing. In accordance with
the domain-based view of creativity, domain-specific knowledge in social commerce is
indispensable for sellers to develop new approaches in their business activities. For
example, a seller may choose to use a combination of pictures, videos and stories to
describe their products instead of using plain texts. Such creative product presentation
may require the seller to have knowledge about how to effectively attract customers’
attention in an online environment. Also, a seller may leverage their own network
(e.g., linking with other sellers) or their customers’ networks (e.g., WOM referrals)
rather than traditional digital marketing vehicles (e.g., banner ads, pay-per-click) to
promote products. Without an understanding of the nature of social network, it is
unlikely for the seller to develop this new promotion action. Therefore, knowledge in
social commerce is a necessary condition for sellers to conceive creative plans
and actions.
Extant research has emphasized that creativity relies heavily on interactions with
others in a domain (Ford and Gioia 2000; Perry-Smith 2006). Information and know-
ledge from others enhance one’s understanding of an area and facilitate the gener-
ation of creative actions (Perry-Smith 2006). The design features of social commerce
(e.g., community support, information sharing) has provided sellers ample opportuni-
ties to interact with and gain information and knowledge from others (Huang and
Benyoucef 2013). Specifically, there are two major sources of information and know-
ledge for sellers in social commerce: other users and social commerce platform
(Figure 1). Therefore, we propose that community information support from other
users and business support from social commerce platforms contribute to seller cre-
ative selling. In this study, we aim to explore how these two sources, under the con-
tingent effect of seller tenure with a social commerce platform, affect seller creative
6 L. CHEN ET AL.

Figure 2. Conceptual framework.

selling. We also aim to empirically test the effect of sellers’ creative selling on business
performance in social commerce context. A conceptual framework is presented in
Figure 2.

Hypotheses
Community information support and seller creative selling
In this study, we define community information support as knowledge, advice or useful
information sellers received from other users in social commerce (Liang et al. 2011;
Madjar 2008). Information exchange is a major component of social commerce. In add-
ition to essential buyer-seller communication enabled by social tools such as instant
messaging, it is common for social commerce websites to provide online communities
for buyers and sellers to discuss broad issues not linked to a particular transaction.
These communities are provided in varying design, including chat rooms, forums, dis-
cussion boards and blogs. For example, many marketplaces, such as eBay and Taobao,
have discussion forums where sellers and buyers can post threads to ask others for
advice. Etsy, an online marketplace for handcrafted and vintage products, offers a var-
iety of ways for its members to exchange information, including blog posts, video
seminars, and group discussions (Boon, Pitt, and Salehi-Sangari 2015). Facilitated by
these social tools, sellers are able to access substantial informational support from
other users on social commerce websites.
Creativity requires domain-relevant knowledge. Just as a machinist needs to under-
stand the function of different parts to creatively solve a breakdown in a mechanized
process, sellers need to have expertise and experience on conducting business in
social commerce to come up with creative ideas and actions. Various information from
other users in social commerce community provides input in understanding of the
area. For example, a seller on Etsy community can read other users’ blog posts and
see how they handle their businesses; hosts on Airbnb Host Groups can share prob-
lems they encounter when renting their properties. The community information sup-
port broadens a seller’s domain-relevant knowledge base which they can draw on to
generate creative ideas and actions. Scholars have argued that enhancements to
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING 7

domain-relevant knowledge should influence the incidence of creative performance

(Campbell 1960; Mumford and Gustafson 1988; Simonton 1999). This argument is sup-
ported by the empirical finding that product managers with more knowledge of the
marketing environment generate more creative marketing programs (Andrews and
Smith 1996) and supplier innovation knowledge positively influences supplier innov-
ation levels (Noordhoff et al. 2011).
In addition, given a problem or task, a seller with more community information sup-
port can validate potential responses against implemented solutions by other users. For
example, sellers on Etsy community could gain insights from shared stories from other
users about successful and unsuccessful experiences of setting up stores or dealing with
customers. This type of diverse information exposure broadens a seller’s perspective and
provides a greater knowledge foundation for understanding the nuances of different
solutions, which in turn enhance a seller’s creative selling by facilitating cognitive
recombinations and improvisations (Mumford and Gustafson 1988; Simonton 1999;
Perry-Smith 2006). Therefore, a seller with more community information support is more
likely to have better creative performance because it enhances sellers’ domain-relevant
knowledge which increases sellers’ ability to generate potential solutions and to validate
them to determine their appropriateness (Perry-Smith 2006).
H1: Community information support positively influences seller creative selling.

Platform business support and seller creative selling

In this study, we define platform business support as the extent to which sellers take
advantage of resources and assistance from the social commerce websites on a range
of business activities such as product promotion, pricing, and customer service. In add-
ition to social tools that facilitate interactions among users, social commerce websites
generally provide various kinds of business support to educate sellers best business
practices. For example, sellers on Etsy can reach out to support staff by email or
request a phone call whenever they have a question or get tips for success from
Etsy’s constantly updating Seller Handbook. Similarly, Airbnb, a social commerce web-
site specializing in short-term lodging services, provides webinars, Q&A sessions and
workshops on a variety of issues such as listing, pricing etc. to their hosts (sellers).
Similar to community information support, platform business support can enhance
sellers’ domain-relevant knowledge. On the one hand, platform business support pro-
vides general industry and operation information. For example, hosts on Airbnb can
access free market reports which contain quantitative analysis and insight into the
short-term rental industry; Sellers on Mogujie, a large social commerce website special-
izing in women fashion products in China, can leverage a variety of operational guid-
ance and tips from the website, such as how to decrease complaint rate, analyze data
and expand customer base. Such information broadens sellers’ domain-relevant know-
ledge base, forming the basis for sellers to develop creative actions. On the other
hand, platform business support offers customized help to individual sellers. Sellers
can reach out to social commerce websites to get support for their specific business
problems (e.g. Q&A sessions, 24-hour trouble-shooting support etc.). These customized
support increases sellers’ expertise in conducting their own businesses. Therefore, the
8 L. CHEN ET AL.

more business support a seller takes advantage of from the social commerce website,
the more knowledgeable they may become in their business domain. When sellers
have more domain-relevant knowledge, they are more likely to develop potential cre-
ative solutions (Mumford and Gustafson 1988; Simonton 1999; Perry-Smith 2006).
H2: Platform business support positively influences seller creative selling.

Moderating effect of seller tenure with the platform

The longer a seller conducts business on a social commerce website, the more experi-
enced they become in transaction-related activities in the social commerce context.
The individual’s existing experiences may limit the benefit of external information able
to be acquired on the generation of creative ideas. On the one hand, an experienced
seller may have built a large knowledge reserve so the incremental gain of new infor-
mation and knowledge becomes little. For example, an experienced seller may have
already encountered the problems or issues that are being discussed in the online
community, so such discussions may not contribute new information to their current
knowledge reserve. On the other hand, an experienced seller’s knowledge will result
in retrieval processes that lead to efficient solution paths, but limited new information
seeking and usage (Kilgour and Koslow 2009). In other words, an experienced seller
may rely heavily on prior knowledge but less on external information in creative prob-
lem-solving (Wiley 1998). When the experienced seller meets a problem in business,
they are likely to use prior ways to handle the problem instead of considering and
integrating new external information available to conceive novel solutions.
The argument that experts tend to use less external information is supported by
many studies in different domains. For example, experts used less information than
did novices in auditing (Bedard 1989), financial analysis (Johnson 1988), and medical
diagnosis (Graaff 1989). Wiley (1998) uses “expertise as mental set” to discuss this
problem, arguing that “domain knowledge may act as a mental set, promoting fixation
in creative problem-solving attempts.” (p 716), and that this fixation may confine
experts’ consideration of new information in creative idea generation. In addition,
deep knowledge and experience in a specific field may generate cognitive inertia
(Tripsas and Gavetti 2000), which may constrain a seller to already existing knowledge
and deteriorates any ability to process external information. Therefore, as a seller
becomes experienced, even provided with information, advice and support by other
users and social commerce platforms, they may not actually process and benefit from
them in the generation of creative ideas and actions. We hypothesize that:
H3: Seller tenure with a social commerce website weakens the positive relationship
between (a) community information support and seller creative selling and (b) platform
business support and seller creative selling.

Seller creative selling and business performance

Creative selling is considered a key driver of business performance. First, creative sell-
ing generates product differentiation, which is a critical determinant of business per-
formance (Andrews and Smith 1996; Im and Workman 2004). Due to low search cost
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING 9

and fierce competition, it is easy for an online customer to switch to a competing

seller (Srinivasan, Anderson, and Ponnavolu 2002). Seller creative selling can positively
differentiate a product or service from competitors by making it more attractive to
customers. For example, creative product presentations increase visual attractiveness
of a seller’s webpage, which can result in more customer visits and increased product
popularity (Van der Heijden 2003). Thus, creative selling serves as an effective mechan-
ism to attract, retain customers, and generate sales volumes.
Second, creative selling can increase site recognition and build customer loyalty.
Consumers, also as web surfers, can easily get bored and tend to exhibit low levels of
patience in an online environment (Dreze and Zufryden 2004). Creative selling can
help a seller build a unique character in the minds of customers. For example, through
the use of creative design, such as text, style, graphics, colors, and logos on the store
to display and promote products, a seller can invoke meaning to create positive cus-
tomer attitudes toward the store, enhancing site recognition and recall (Srinivasan,
Anderson, and Ponnavolu 2002). Increased recognition and recall generate site traffic
by attracting new customers and bringing existing customers back, providing a basis
for generating sales. Therefore, we hypothesize:
H4: Seller creative selling positively influences seller business performance.

Method
Research setting
Our empirical setting is a large online social commerce platform specializing in custom-
ized products and services in China. The platform operates across more than thirty cities
and has local offices and representatives managing sellers in different locations. The plat-
form offers a range of services to support sellers. The level of support each office pro-
vides to their sellers varies depending on local market size, personnel availability, and
local managers’ discretion. Individuals (Sellers) go through a registration and verification
process before being authorized to sell on the platform. Seller offerings include a variety
of customized services such as travel guiding, handcrafting, language training, etc.
The following summarizes defining characteristics of our research setting: (1) sellers
in our research setting can conduct business and use various social tools on the social
commerce platforms, such as forums and instant messaging, to interact with peer sellers
and consumers; (2) sellers manage their own web stores on the platform by determin-
ing product assortments, customizing product presentations and displays, and delivering
goods and service; (3) sellers can leverage various support from the platform, but the
platform doesn’t directly get involved in sellers’ business operations; (4) sellers profit by
sales made on the platforms. These characteristics allow us to capture sellers’ creative
selling behavior and explore its antecedents and outcomes in social commerce.

Sample and data collection procedures

We approached one of the executives of the platform about the research project and
got approval for our data collection to investigate our hypotheses. First, we conducted
in-depth interviews with three senior managers at the platform to understand their
10 L. CHEN ET AL.

business model. Each of the interviews lasted for about an hour and provided us
insights into sellers’ business practices in the platform, the nature of interactions
between members in the platform communities, and the level and type of support for
sellers available from the platform. Second, based on these interviews and an exten-
sive review of previous literature on creative selling and social commerce (Baron and
Tang 2011; Liang et al. 2011), we developed an English version of the questionnaire,
translated it into Chinese, and then asked two researchers to independently back-
translate to ensure conceptual equivalence. Third, we invited ten sellers to answer the
survey questions and provide feedback about their clarity, and instructions and the
appropriateness of the terminologies used. Based on these pretests, we refined and
finalized the questionnaire.
From a list of 5,000 sellers provided from the platform manager, we selected a ran-
dom sample of 1,000 sellers and distributed the survey via a mobile application plat-
form (Wechat) that the sellers use daily. Daily reminders were sent to increase
response rate. The data collection lasted 20 days and we obtained 204 submitted
responses. We then removed responses with significant missing values. This resulted
in 200 responses. To check for non-response bias, we conducted independent sample
t-tests and ANOVA on key seller characteristics, such as age, gender, and sales
between the participating and nonparticipating sellers. The results found no significant
differences, so nonresponse bias did not appear to be a concern. On average, sellers
have been on the platform for about 3.7 months. 54.5% of the sellers are young entre-
preneurs between ages of 18 to 25. 38.5% of the sellers are female and 36.5% of
them have prior experiences selling on similar social commerce platforms.

Measures
We developed the measures based on existing literature and business insight gained
from interviews with the sellers and managers at the platform. Measures are based on
a 5-point Likert scale and anchored on 1 ¼ strongly disagree and 5 ¼ strongly agree,
except for seller business satisfaction, which is anchored on 1 ¼ strongly dissatisfied
and 5 ¼ strongly satisfied.
Seller performance was measured in two alternative ways: trade volume and seller
business satisfaction. Trade volume is objective sales data from the social commerce
platform (number of orders a seller received in the five-month observation period after
our survey data collection) while seller business satisfaction is obtained from seller sur-
vey data.
Seller creative selling was adapted from Wang and Netemeyer (2004). We changed
the wording to fit the online social commerce context. To verify the quality of the sur-
vey response and check the validity of sellers’ self-reported creative selling, an inde-
pendent researcher evaluated a random sample of 25 sellers’ webstores. Two aspects,
product presentation and communication style, were evaluated based on a 5-point
Likert scale (1 ¼ less creative to 5 ¼ very creative). We then averaged the two scores
for each aspect and got an independent measure of seller creative selling. We com-
pared sellers’ self-reported and the researcher coded measure of seller creative selling,
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING 11

Table 1. Measurement reliability and validity.

Reliability &
Variables Items Loadings validity
Seller business How satisfied are you with your business Cronbach’s
satisfaction performance in terms of: alpha¼ 0.85
the popularity of your offerings? 0.792
number of orders? 0.815 AVE ¼0.78
customer evaluations and feedbacks? 0.706
return on investment? 0.765
Platform business The platform provided me a lot of support on … Cronbach’s
support Adapted from promoting my offerings 0.688 alpha ¼ 0.92
Russell et al (1985) designing and presenting my offerings 0.859 AVE ¼0.71
processing transactions 0.883
pricing my offerings 0.908
communicating with customers 0.891
Community Information I obtained information relevant to my business 0.724 Cronbach’s
Support Adapted from from other users on the platform alpha¼ 0.85
Liang et al. (2011) Other users on the platform give me advice 0.907
on my offerings
I get valuable information from other users 0.881 AVE ¼0.78
on the platform
Creative selling Adapted I use unique and creative ideas and/or Cronbach’s
from Wang and approaches to … alpha¼ 0.85
Netemeyer (2004) design my offerings 0.776
present my offerings 0.813 AVE ¼0.78
promote my offerings 0.730
solve customer problems 0.856
interact with customers 0.846
Fit Indices: CFI ¼ 0.98; GFI ¼ 0.84; RMSEA ¼ 0.073; Chi-square ¼ 298.3, d.f.¼218.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics and correlations of key constructs.

Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Seller Business Satisfaction 3.40 1.04 0.88
2. Community Information Support 3.28 1.00 0.35 0.84
3. Platform Business Support 3.65 0.97 0.43 0.51 0.84
4. Creative Selling 3.78 0.88 0.43 0.48 0.50 0.80
5. Trade Volume 60.65 299.20 0.34 0.13 0.17 0.19 0.01
6. Tenure with the platform 3.70 2.57 0.34 0.03 0.08 0.14 0.03 0.62
p < .05; p < .01, p < .001 (two-tailed).
The diagonal elements in bold are the square roots of the average variance extracted for the constructs measured.

and found significant positive correlation (r ¼ 0.63, p < 0.01), supporting the validity of
sellers’ self-reported measure.
Platform business support was adapted from Russell et al., (1985), and Community
information support was adapted from Liang et al. (2011). Table 1 presents the
measurement items for each construct. Table 2 provides descriptive statistics of
the constructs.
Seller tenure with the platform is measured as the number of months since the seller
has registered at the platform as a seller. This value was obtained from the platform
record. We also controlled for several variables that are relevant to seller creative selling
and seller performance. These variables include: the seller’s age (Age), gender (Gender),
interest level on social selling (Interest). Control variables were measured as: Age was coded
as 1 if the seller was over 25 years old, and 0 otherwise; Gender was coded as 1 if the seller
was female, and 0 otherwise; Interest measured a seller’s interest level towards selling on
social platform. It was measured on a five-point scale ranging from very low to very high.
12 L. CHEN ET AL.

Construct validity
We first examined all items in EFA and found 4 factors that exceeded eigenvalues of
1. These 4 factors together explained 74.08% of the total variance. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin
(KMO) measure of sampling adequacy was 0.88, above the commonly recommended
value of 0.6. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (Chi-Square ¼ 2228.87, df ¼
136, p < 0.0001). The communalities were all above 0.6, indicating shared correlation
between all the items. These overall indicators suggested that the data was adequate
for EFA.
We assessed the reliability and validity of the measures with an overall confirmatory
factor analysis (CFA) model. Overall, the model fits well (RMSEA ¼ 0.073, CFI ¼ 0.98,
GFI ¼ 0.84). All factor loadings were in a range of 0.68 to 0.91. In support of conver-
gent validity, all of the Cronbach’s alphas are greater than the 0.7 threshold, indicating
adequate reliability (Churchill 1979). Further, all the constructs have an average vari-
ance extracted (AVE) of above 0.5, indicating high convergent validity (Fornell and
Larcker 1981). We compared the square root of the AVE with the correlations (Fornell
and Larcker 1981) to assess the discriminant validity of the constructs. As shown in
Table 3, the off-diagonal correlations representing shared variance among constructs
are significantly smaller than the diagonal elements representing the square roots of
the AVE for each construct, indicating good discriminant validity. Taken together,
these results indicate that the measures possessed adequate reliability and con-
struct validity.

Common method bias

To alleviate common method bias concerns, we used multi-source data including both
primary (platform business support, community information support, and seller cre-
ative selling) and secondary data (seller tenure with the platform and number of
orders as an objective seller performance indicator) to test the hypotheses. In addition,
we also compared means of the seller performance between the early and late
responses and found no significant differences. Therefore, common method bias was
not a serious concern for this study.

Analysis and results

We tested the hypotheses using moderated regression models. Because one of the
dependent variables, trade volume, is a count variable that does not have a normal
distribution, we used a negative binomial regression model to test the effect of seller
creative selling on trade volume. To mitigate the potential threat of multicollinearity,
we used mean-centering to construct the interaction terms (Aiken, West, and Reno
1991). To check the potential multicollinearity issue, we checked the variance inflation
factor (VIF) in the regression models and found that the largest variance inflation fac-
tor in the full moderated regression models is 1.51, considerably smaller than the cut-
off point of 10.0 (Hair and Tatham 2006).
As shown in Table 3, the control variables only accounted for 28.2% of the variance
in seller creative selling. Adding the focal independent variables, platform business
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING 13

Table 3. Impact of platform and community support on seller creative selling.

Independent variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Intercept 1.52 (5.46) 2.41 (8.22) 2.38 (8.08)
Controls
1. Seller Age .02 (.11) .02 (.10) .06 (.32)
2. Seller Gender .08 (.71) .00 (.03) .01 (.13)
3. Interest .54 ( 8.45) .33 (4.91) .33 (4.82)
4. Seller Tenure with the platform .04 (1.77)þ .03 (1.70)þ .03 (1.68)þ
Main effects
5. Platform Business Support .24 (3.88) .25 (3.99)
6. Community Information Support .17 (2.92) .17 (2.88)
Interaction effects
7. Platform Business Support Community Information Support .07 (1.40)
8. Community Information Support Seller Tenure .05 (-2.10)
9. Platform Business Support Seller Tenure .00 (.09)
R-square 0.282 0.403 0.487
Adjusted R-square 0.267 0.384 0.465
R-square Change – 0.121 0.084
F-value 19.14 21.67 15.69
Log Likelihood 224.07 205.68 198.62
Dependent variable ¼ Seller Creative selling.
N ¼ 200; þp < 0.1; p < .05; p < .01 level (two-tailed tests).

support and community information support in Model 2 increased R-square by 0.121

(p < .05). The addition of the interaction terms in Model 3 further increased R-square
significantly compared with Model 2 (R-square increased 0.084, p < .05), indicating
that the full moderation regression model is the best-fit model.
Table 3 indicates platform business support and community information support
have significant positive effects on seller creative selling (bpbs¼0.25 p<.01 and
bcis¼0.17, p < .01). These results support H1 and H2. As shown in Model 3 in Table 3,
seller tenure with the platform has a significant, negative moderating effect on the
relationship between community information support and seller creative selling (bst ¼
0.05, p < .05), supporting H3a. However, results in Model 3 indicate that seller ten-
ure with the platform does not significantly moderate the relationship between plat-
form business support and seller creative selling (bst=-0.00, n.s.). Thus, H3b is
not supported.
To investigate the moderating effects of seller tenure with the platform fully, we
decomposed the interaction term and compared the impact of community informa-
tion support on seller creative selling at low and high levels of seller tenure with the
platform. In Figure 3, we illustrate the effect of community information support on
seller creative selling for low (one standard deviation below the mean) and high levels
(one standard deviation above the mean) of seller tenure with the platform. As shown
in Figure 3, community information support has diminishing effects on seller creative
selling as seller tenure with the platform increases. We further did a gradient search (a
floodlight moderation test) to determine the point at which a seller is most likely not
to benefit much from community information support (Spiller et al., 2013). The result
indicated that for a new seller who had been on the platform for 1.1 months (i.e., one
standard deviation below the average), the effect size of community information sup-
port on creative selling is 0.29 (t ¼ 3.51, p < 0.01). The effect size dropped to 0.17
(t ¼ 2.88, p < 0.05) for a seller who had been with the platform for 3.7 months (i.e., the
average seller tenure). Finally, the effect size decreased to 0.11 (t ¼ 1.68, p < 0.1,
14 L. CHEN ET AL.

Figure 3. Moderating effect of seller tenure with the platform.

Table 4. Impact of creative selling on seller performance.

Independent Variables Seller Business Satisfactiona,c Seller Trade Volumeb,c
Intercept 0.75 (1.98) 0.31 (0.82) 1.02 (2.20) 0.00 (0.00)
1. Creative Selling – 0.36 (4.26) – 0.48 (3.96)
Control
2. Age 0.11 (-0.82) 0.05 (.40) 0.42 (-1.74)þ 0.32 (-1.54)
3. Gender 0.35 (2.55) 0.32 (2.43) 0.59 (2.35) 0.33 (1.13)
4. Interest 0.37 (4.82) 0.18 (2.06) 0.17 (-1.67)þ 0.04 (0.40)
5. Tenure with the platform 0.20 (5.37) 0.09 (4.76) 0.20 (4.94) 0.17 (5.22)
R-square 0.24 0.31
Adjusted R-square 0.22 0.29
R-square Change n/a .07
F-value 16.01 17.57
Log Likelihood 263.38 249.18 831.17 826.28
AIC/N 8.96 8.91
N ¼ 200; b: N ¼ 187; c: þp < 0.1; p < 0.05; p < 0.01.

marginal significance) when the seller tenure increased to 5 months and became insig-
nificant (though still positive) when the seller had been with the platform for
6.3 months (bst¼.05, n.s.).
Table 4 depicts the regression test results of the impact of seller creative selling on
seller business satisfaction and seller trade volume. The change in R-squared, likeli-
hood-ratio test (Dv2¼14.2, d.f.¼1) and the AIC (DAIC/n ¼ 0.05) indicated that the add-
ition of seller creative selling significantly improved explained variance in seller
business satisfaction and trade volume, respectively. As Table 4 shows, seller creative
selling has a significant, positive effect on seller business satisfaction (bscs¼0.36,
p<.01) and a significant, positive effect on trade volume (bscs¼0.48, p<.01). These
results support H4.
Our theoretical framework suggests a mediating role of creative selling on the rela-
tionship between the independent variables and the dependent variables. We
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING 15

conducted a mediation test with the bootstrapping approach (Hayes, 2015; Preacher
et al., 2007). We assessed the significance of the indirect effects of the independent
variables on the dependent variables through the mediator by estimating a bias cor-
rected 95% confidence interval (CI) based on a bootstrapping with 5,000 resamples.
When the CI does not contain zero, the indirect mediating effect is significant
(Preacher et al., 2007; Preacher and Hayes, 2008). The indirect effects of platform busi-
ness support and community information support on seller business satisfaction and
trade volume through creative selling were both statistically significant. These results
support the theorized mediating role of creative selling.

Discussion and implications

Despite the rapid growth of social commerce, little is known about determinants of
seller performance from a seller’s perspective. A complete understanding of social
commerce phenomenon needs insights from both a consumer side and a seller side.
The findings we report here shed light on sellers’ behavior in social commerce.
Specifically, we demonstrate that support from other users and the platform can
inspire seller creative selling, which leads to better seller business satisfaction and
increased trade volume.
Overall, the findings suggest that community information support and platform
business support play important roles in sellers’ creative selling behavior. Different
from one (seller)-to-one (buyer) interactions that traditional e-commerce focuses on,
social commerce is characterized by communities and conversations among all users
(Huang and Benyoucef 2013). This enhancement of user interactions facilitates mass
information exchange, providing sellers opportunities to gain knowledge and experi-
ence from other users. The inputs from other users contribute to sellers’ understand-
ing of how to conduct business in the social commerce context, forming the basis for
sellers to generate creative ideas in selling activities. Therefore, to fully leverage the
benefits of social commerce, platforms may devote more effort to promote user infor-
mation exchange, such as appoint specific personnel to manage online communities,
launch group discussions, and host visual Q&A meetings.
In terms of platform business support, scholars have pointed out that there is a
lack of knowledge on how social commerce websites influence transactions, support
sales and serve as a selling platform (Yadav et al. 2013). We demonstrate that sellers
can benefit from the business process support from the platform through enhancing
their creative selling behaviors. Our mediation analysis also shows a mediating role of
creative selling in the relationship between the two types of support (i.e., platform
business support and community information support) and seller business perform-
ance. This finding represents a step towards understanding the role of social com-
merce platforms play in generating values and may open more future research
opportunities to investigate the “support-to-performance” path in social commerce.
For example, platform companies should expand seller support to focus on both sel-
lers’ business and socialization. As the environment of e-commerce is changing from
product-oriented to socially centered, it becomes crucial for platforms to not only pro-
vide business support that educates sellers best online business practices but also
16 L. CHEN ET AL.

networking support that increases sellers’ leverage of social applications to share

information.
Our hypotheses on the moderation effects of seller tenure with the platform are
partially supported. While seller tenure with the platform significantly moderates the
relationship between community information support and seller creative selling, its
moderation effect is not significant on the relationship between platform business
support and seller creative selling. We speculate that it may be due to the specificity
of the information sellers receive regarding selling activities from these two sources.
For example, in online forums and communities, users tend to discuss broad issues in
social commerce. Such issues are helpful in general but may not be useful to specific
problems individual sellers have. Therefore, new sellers may benefit more from this
general broad information. As a seller gets experienced, They may rely on accumu-
lated knowledge to design creative actions instead of the general information avail-
able in the communities. In contrast, platform business support is specific to individual
seller’s problems and business contexts. Sellers contact the platform when they
encounter issues regarding their own businesses. Business supports from platforms,
such as individual Q&A and email and phone services, are all designed to cater to an
individual seller’s needs. Therefore, platform business support provides customized
useful information to sellers whether they are new or experienced, helping them
extend existing knowledge and generate creative ideas.
Our research also sheds light on the importance of seller creative selling in an
online context. To the best of our knowledge, our research is the first to empirically
investigate how creative selling generates value in social commerce. Our analysis
results show that seller creative selling significantly increases sellers’ satisfaction about
their business performance and generates more trade volumes.
These findings have valuable implications for sellers in social commerce. The con-
ventional wisdom regarding internet competition asserts that internet is a nearly per-
fect market where information is instantaneous so buyers can easily compare the
offerings of sellers, resulting in fierce price competition and dwindling product differ-
entiation (Brynjolfsson and Smith 2000). Our results indicate that creative selling plays
a significant role in adding value and generating sales. Therefore, instead of only
focusing on low prices to attract customers, sellers may benefit from devoting effort
on designing creative selling activities, which can provide competitive advantages dif-
ficult for competitors to imitate and help sellers achieve long-term success. We also
additionally analyzed the effects of each specific creative selling efforts on seller per-
formance. We found that among the five creative selling efforts we measured, creative
selling on customer interaction has the largest significant positive effect on seller per-
ceived business satisfaction while creative selling on promotion has the largest signifi-
cant positive effect on trade volume. These findings yield some interesting
implications for both sellers and platform companies. First, sellers may want to put
more effort on creative product promotion than other creative selling activities to
increase sales. Second, platforms may effectively increase seller satisfaction by helping
them develop creative skills on customer interaction. Since unsatisfied sellers may be
likely to drop their online business, it is crucial for platforms to keep sellers satisfied
about their online business. Our analysis suggests that paying more attention to
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING 17

sellers’ creative skill on customer interaction (e.g., provide online trainings on customer
services) may effectively achieve this result.
Focusing on seller creative selling, our research furthers the understanding of social
commerce. Theoretically, we add pieces from a seller perspective to complete the pic-
ture of social commerce phenomenon. Practically, our findings yield valuable insights
for social commerce platform managers. Contrary to the belief that buyers are more
important for driving growth, recent study has demonstrated that sellers are more
influential on growing the network of a marketplace (Chu and Manchanda 2016). A
better understanding of seller behavior can help social commerce platform managers
effectively incentivize and support sellers. For example, social commerce websites can
sponsor different online communities based on seller tenure (new or experienced sel-
lers) to effectively manage their information sharing and help them achieve better
business performance. We encourage future research that explores other seller behav-
iors in social commerce and different strategies social commerce platforms can use to
stimulate knowledge exchange among users.

Limitations
This research is not without limitations. First, our data is from one social commerce
platform. The platform we studied is relatively new and specialized in offering custom-
ized services. This research setting may limit the generalizability of our findings.
Further research may explore other social commerce websites with various product or
service contexts. Second, our research uses community information support to capture
information received from both buyers and sellers instead of separating these two dif-
ferent information sources. We did so because in our research setting, sellers can also
be buyers. The platform promotes “mutual relationship” among its members and this
“mutual relationship” is one of the platform’s most popular features. Therefore, many
sellers on the platform are also active buyers of other sellers’ offerings. In addition, the
communities sponsored by the platform are open to all the members. So sellers read
information from both sellers and buyers, making it hard to separate the information
sources. Future research may separate these two information sources and investigate
how they influence sellers’ behavior differently. Third, we used self-reported measure
of creative selling in this study. Although we supported this measure with additional
evaluation from an independent researcher, we encourage scholars to explore other
more objective approaches to measure creativity in social commerce. Finally, we
focused on a domain-based view of creativity and only explored two major informa-
tion sources in our framework. There may be more relevant variables critical to drive
seller creative selling, such as personality, motivation, and ability. We encourage future
studies to look into more seller characteristic variables for a comprehensive framework
of creative selling in social commerce. In addition, conditional factors (e.g., product
type, competition intensity) that moderate the relationship between creative selling
and seller performance may be worthwhile directions to investigate in the
future research.
18 L. CHEN ET AL.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support from the National Natural Science Fund of
China for Young Scholars [grant number 71702060].

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